EDITORIAL
READY FOR THE GO-AHEAD? I n this issue, we reflect on the tenth anniversary of the Faculty of Engineering Technology. What is there to celebrate? What future does the young faculty see for itself? What does it want to bet on? And what can it lean on to turn its vision into reality?
These questions were addressed at an academic ceremony on 30 October 2023. What was told there inspires joy and hope. In barely a decade, the young multi-campus faculty has become unavoidable in the big university that is KU Leuven. The newcomer has marketed its own engineering profile. It has succeeded in joining the forces of six campuses with each their own engineering programmes, developing new curricula, introducing innovative forms of education, strengthening ties with the business and industry, and expanding international activities and cooperation. Thanks to the substantial expansion of applied scientific and technological research, the faculty plays a key role in the valorisation of basic research and its translation to industry and society. The stage is set for a solid move into the next decade when rapid technological advances and global challenges demand innovative and entrepreneurial engineers more than ever. Our faculty and its six campuses are ready to educate them. With a birthday comes gifts. We received the best birthday present from Australia. There, the engineering students of the Solar Team became world champions in the World Solar Challenge for the second time in a row and picked up the coveted innovation prize. An extraordinary feat of engineering, entrepreneurship, and team spirit. Another boost was the medal of honour presented by KU Leuven on 30 October to Filip Timmermans, alumnus of our faculty. He received this high distinction for his achievements as an innovative engineer and visionary entrepreneur. Earlier, researchers from the AdvISe group on Geel Campus worked their way into the spotlight by sending a satellite along with an Arianne Vega-C rocket. The satellite contains a sensor that maps radiation levels around the earth that could be harmful to electronic data traffic in space. In July, Phi Tran, a recent master’s graduate in Chemical Engineering Technology, brought great honor to our faculty by winning the first Belgian Womenpreneur & VINCI Award. Phi was chosen among twenty other engineers from across the country as a role model for current and future female engineers. Another eye-catcher in this issue is the new Leuven Research Centre for Affordable Health Technology that was recently established. Ten professors and researchers from the
departments of Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science have joined forces to design medical technology that is affordable in several countries and regions where there are insufficient financial and logistic resources to install sophisticated and expensive applications. We are proud to host this new centre on our Leuven campus. The rapid rise of research at our faculty is also reflected in this issue. We focus on research on the quality of bioplastics (KU Leuven-Bruges), on immersive technologies in education (KU Leuven-Ghent), on the use of digital technologies based on AI in healthcare (Group T Leuven Campus) and on the competences underlying lifelong learning (De Nayer Campus). The latter study yielded remarkable results. For instance, it showed that barely 1% of current learning outcomes in engineering education focus on Lifelong Learning (LLL) competences. Moreover, some competencies were often found to be present in courses that are not part of the engineering curriculum. There appears to be few systematic competence building in LLL throughout the programme. These results indicate that there is still a lot of work to be done regarding LLL in the curricula. Let us take this as a challenge for the second decade. We are ready for the goaround, are we not?
Professor Bert Lauwers Dean of the Faculty of Engineering Technology CONNECTING
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