KU Leuven

Network for safe and sustainable by design electromagnetic shielding for vehicles
PARASOL is a Doctoral Network at the intersection of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), materials engineering, system-safety engineering, and sustainability management. The project will include the Safe and Sustainable-by-Design (SSbD) approach for vehicles. The Doctoral Researchers (DRs) trained in the project will research electromagnetic (EM) shielding solutions, which are performance defining technologies in terms of EM safety, weight, volume, mechanical strength, and the cost of a vehicle.
The SSbD approach is pivotal for addressing electromagnetic interference (EMI) challenges in the evolving mobility market, marked by the rise of electric vehicles and increased autonomous functionality. The absence of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and a comprehensive assessment methodology hinders effective EMI shielding solutions. The project aims to fill these gaps, providing valuable KPIs and insights through effective communication and dissemination. Bridging these challenges will empower companies, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, to navigate EMI risk management successfully, contributing to the overall goal of developing efficient KPIs for shielding solutions using the SSbD approach in the mobility sector.

PopEye is a Horizon Europe research project focused on improved identity verification, enhanced security, and a better border-crossing experience. We optimise the efficiency and operational capabilities of border guards through novel on-the-move biometric solutions, offering travellers a smoother journey.
This is an EU project in the HORIZON-CL3-2023-BM-01 call. The DMB group develops advanced 3D face recognition solutions.

European Doctoral Network for Resilient Remote Healthcare using Intelligent Sensing and Communication Technologies
Coordinated by Prof. Yang Miao, the SMARTTEST project brings together world leading experts from Enschede, Leuven, Milano, Roma, Utrecht, Ostrava Poruba and Padova.
Remote health monitoring (and/or self-monitoring) is essential for the timely and optimal disease management. SMARTTEST is a timely and innovative project with a selected inter-disciplinary team of 9 academic partners, 8 companies, 1 state inspectorate, 1 hospital and 1 healthcare service organisation with the goal of training a future generation of engineers that are capable of bridging advanced wireless technologies and radio signal processing, biomedical signal analytics and health monitoring to maximize the effectiveness of personalized healthcare. These inter-disciplinary engineers will develop a holistic view on the design and development of integrated sensing and communication devices as well as algorithms for contact-free, continuous and proactive remote health monitoring, with profound knowledge on biomedical domain and social practices.
The SMARTTEST research programme is designed on two backbone principles: (1) it must address the challenges of the personalized health monitoring paradigm, being contact-free and proactive and able to perform early alarm of disease complication, health restoration monitoring and chronic disease prevention; (2) it must address the challenges of the core enabling technology - integrating intelligent human sensing into communication networks.

Eternity is a European funded Marie Skłodowska-Curie project, with partners from Belgium, Portugal, Spain and The Netherlands. Each of the 14 Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) will be trained to work in multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural teams, with a new mindset tuned towards the inclusion of the three main elements of a risk-based approach into innovative design methods. For this inclusion to occur, each ESR will develop through their research the missing dedicated tools and techniques, and apply them to a representative set of medical devices under development. This hands-on training is supplemented with several scientific professional courses and an immersive training where the ESRs can fine-tune their skills for the Jobs of tomorrow, while addressing the societal challenges of the ETERNITY program. More detailed information on the purpose and structure of the project can be found under “About” at the top of the page.
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Geospatial technology innovations for land tenure security in East Africa
In most Western countries land rights are recorded in a land registry. Property has a verifiable owner and a mapped boundary. Usually this kind of information forms the basis for taxation as a form of income for national governments. However, in a lot of countries this is not so obvious and land tenure is not maintained. This causes a lot of disputes, land grabbing, slum formation and miss-use of land resources. The goal of its4land is to develop tools to make the mapping of land rights faster, cheaper, easier and more responsible. They are inspired by the continuum of land rights, fit-for-purpose land administration, and cadastral intelligence. Ultimately this must lead to an end-user oriented land administration system. Therefore, emergent geospatial and Earth observations technologies, including smart sketch maps, Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), automated feature extraction, and Geocloud services are used.
The overriding philosophy of this project is that it transcends single disciplines, country approaches or national boundaries. In this project development means co-designing, adapting, integrating, demonstrating and validating. The project seeks to enable tool combinations that are both end-user and market responsive.
The its4land project is carried out by eight consortium partners from Europe and East Africa combining academia and private sector. African partners are Ethiopia (Bahir Dar University), Kenya (Technical University of Kenya) and Rwanda (INES Ruhengeri; ESRI Rwanda). European partners are the Netherlands (ITC), Germany (University of Muenster; Hansa Luftbild) and  Belgium (KU Leuven).