A success story: the student teams of the TU/e
They think about smart homes, develop drones that can deliver medicines and build their own solar-powered car. Who they are? Students of the Technical University of Eindhoven. With their renowned student teams, they are getting impressive innovations off the ground.
The Technical University of Eindhoven is a breeding ground for tech talent and entrepreneurial minds. Students with an ambitious plan often organise themselves into a student team. To test and develop an idea together with talented students from other study programs. And to provide radically new answers to today's societal challenges.
Excellent network
The university facilitates the student teams in many ways. With office space and workshops, for example. The Momentum building on the Campus is home to many student teams, just like the nearby innovation Space: a unique community where students and researchers from all kinds of disciplines work together with companies on new prototypes. In addition to being a physical place, the TU/e innovation Space is also a digital community with on overview of all current projects and student teams.
The TU/e approach results in multidisciplinary and highly qualified teams. Several of them were covered by international media and you will undoubtedly know some of them by name. Think of the Solar Team Eindhoven, which won the World Solar Challenge in Australia, or Tech United, which is the multiple champion of the RoboCup (the world soccer championship for robot teams). Or the members of the STORM team, who traveled around the world in eighty days with their (self-built) electric motorcycle. Heroic, but above all meaningful. The team wanted to demonstrate the potential of electric motorcycles with their world trip. And they did. The students are now turning their team into a company and are helping to electrify the Kenyan motorcycle market.
Successful startups
And that's what you often see in student teams, the ambition to really make a difference. For example, alumni of the Solar Team Eindhoven have founded the company Lightyear, which is rapidly working on a completely new car that charges itself via solar energy. The company now employs around forty people and recently gained Sioux as an investor and technological partner. The first batch of models will be launched in 2019.
TU/e student teams
Many student teams are involved in new forms of sustainable mobility, but also in robotics, drones and biosensors. For more info on the TU/e student teams, check out this overview.
