‘The urgency of international collaboration is high’

“After working for six years as a Strategic Communication Advisor for the TU Delft Health Initiative and the TU Delft Sports Engineering Institute, I started in 2019 as the Programme Lead of the TU Delft|Global Initiative, working together with the Scientific Director Nick van de Giesen and the Delft Global team. Before joining TU Delft, I worked for years in Jakarta and Brussels on various development cooperation projects, so this position was an excellent opportunity to bring strategy and passion together. TU Delft|Global Initiative has a very large and diverse community within TU Delft and is also expanding outside TU Delft. It is working with local partners to pursue education, research, capacity building and entrepreneurship activities in low and middle-income countries in Sub Saharan Africa and South East Asia.

My task is to have a strategic perspective on the programme, what we want to do, what would be interesting for TU Delft to explore, and connecting with external partners. For instance, it’s about finding connections with the Sustainable Development Goal agendas as well as what the Dutch Government wants to achieve in the countries we focus on. I also work on funding opportunities for our activities, in close collaboration with the Valorisation Centre and the University Fund.

We have a lot of projects in a very wide range of topics, for instance in the water, energy, healthcare and housing domains. We try to work together with our community on projects that eventually develop science-driven technical solutions for the more global challenges that have an impact on a local level and in co-creation with our partners. From low-cost weather stations that provide more accurate weather predictions for farmers, to sustainable floating homes in coastal areas, and an affordable MRI scanner for places where few are available now. We find it very important to involve our local partners at an early stage to define together what the needs are and then work on our solutions, research and education activities.

‘It’s not only about transferring knowledge, the old school way of development work, but it’s about exchanging’

On our website you can find our global impact map, which is a nice visual way to get a better idea of the kind of projects we do. You can see projects by country, topics and also which partners we collaborate with and what kind of activities are being done.

I like that we, as a scientific institution, can have a great role in tackling global challenges and thus improve people’s lives. It’s really interesting to have cultures mingling together and working together to find those urgent challenges we need to solve and understand better. For me it’s important to recognise that if there’s something happening on one side of the globe it always has an effect on the other side of the globe. It doesn’t matter which side it is, but there is an interconnectivity. Climate change and the COVID pandemic for instance emphasise that; the urgency of international collaboration is high.

The greatest impact we can have as a university, perhaps, is in the countries where the standards are different, and the impact comes through sharing and exchanging our knowledge. We have a lot to learn as well from what others do. It’s not only about transferring knowledge, the old school way of development work, but it’s really exchanging. What I like the most about my work is that we do that with a very diverse and talented community. Besides senior researchers, we have a large group of PhD students working on different topics and scholarship students from Sub Saharan Africa. It’s a really lively community that comes together every month for a (virtual) lunch. It’s nice to learn from each other and inspire each other, to have so many insights and perspectives together. That’s very inspiring and helps us make an impact together.”

• TU Delft|Global Initiative welcomes anyone interested in the topics they work on. Let them know if you would like to be involved in this community.

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Heather Montague / Freelance writer