Boost for interdisciplinary, sustainability research at Utrecht University

In lowlands of Western Europe, biodiversity loss has been dramatic. Effective conservation and restoration are hampered by limited knowledge of baseline conditions and developments of vegetation prior to and during agricultural intensification in the past. With her research, Catrien Hoffman aims to fill this knowledge gap by reconstructing biodiversity trends in agricultural landscapes in this area before, during and after agricultural intensification over the past 500 years.

Hoffman will conduct this research in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team that combines expertise in the fields of environmental biology, and geology. Catrien Hoffman graduated from the Master’s programme Environmental Biology.

The energy consumption of computers is responsible for around 10 percent of the global electricity demand, and this is projected to grow dramatically over the coming years. Neuromorphic computing - inspired by neural networks in the brain - shows great promise for more sustainable methods of computation. The fundamental building blocks of neuromorphic chips are memristors, which can mimic synaptic connections between neurons. Tim Kamsma will research different types of memristors, and the circuits that can be built with them to pursue energy-efficient methods of computation, by combining knowledge from disciplines such as physics, mathematics and neuroscience.

How can we achieve food security and biodiversity conservation in areas shared between people on the one hand and animals damaging crops on the other? According to Ronja Knippers, we need to steer human-wildlife interactions from conflict to coexistence. In order to achieve this paradigm shift, we need to deepen our knowledge of the influence of human perception on wildlife tolerance, the influence of the availability of food on the damaging of crops, and the influence of the abundance of humans and wildlife on the wildlife’s perception of being hunted.

This study will present an interdisciplinary collaboration between the Faculties of Science and Geoscience. Ronja Knippers graduated from the Master’s programme Environmental Biology.

Inspired by characteristics of white beetle scales, Geert Schulpen will investigate whether a new, shapable gel, called bijel, could be an effective coating for passive radiative cooling. The scales of white beetles have been found to possess more efficient cooling properties than current state-of-the-art coatings. Passive temperature regulation is essential for reducing energy consumption, and the new coating could be used on the outer walls of buildings to reflect large amounts of sunlight.

The research will be particularly interdisciplinary, as it combines the chemistry and physics of anisotropic particles with interfacial assembly, and the analysis of the material's optical properties." Geert Schulpen graduated from the Master’s programmes Experimental Physics and Nanomaterials Science.