Wageningen University joins the collaboration between the three technical universities in the Netherlands (3TU.Federation). As of today the federation will be known as 4TU.Federation, or simply 4TU, and the cooperation in the field of education and research will be expanded. The four technical universities of Delft, Eindhoven, Twente and Wageningen will intensify their collaboration to strengthen the interaction with industry. With Wageningen University joining, some interesting crossovers between high tech and agri & food come to sight as well as in the areas of water and environment. 

Joint activities
The 3TU.Federation has been working closely together in the field of education and research. There are five 3TU.master programmes, a Centre for Engineering Education and the Institute of Professional Doctorate Education. They connect to the successful growth in student numbers in technical education. The federation has nine Research Centres and the data management is supported by the 3TU.Datacentrum, part of Research Data Netherlands. With Wageningen joining, possibilities for extending the activities are being explored, for example in the field of:

We are currently facing one of the greatest social challenges of this century: over the coming 40 years, the global food demand will be equal to the total amount of food produced over the last 8,000 years. Applying high-tech systems and materials and new ICT possibilities will support the agrarian and food sectors to meet the enormous social challenges associated with this. Moreover, the competitive position of these sectors in the Netherlands will improve and opportunities will arise to export new systems using these applications. Conversely, high-tech sectors will be challenged to find solutions to the problems that have stood in the way of such applications until now, such as non-uniform products, the circumstances in which systems have to function and limited economic scope for innovation. It is essential that the sectors concerned work intensively together on these opportunities.

The 4TU.Centre for Engineering Education (CEE) is set up to support and research educational innovations that are taking place at the universities of technology in the Netherlands. In only a short period of time, from September 2014 onwards, CEE’s core team managed to instigate many projects that contribute to the innovation of engineering education. This resulted in various publications, ranging from reports to conference contributions, activities such as workshops and meetings both large and small scale that have been organised. This enabled education staff to learn about innovations, exchange ideas and actively participate.

In January, the 3TU.Federation submitted its Final Report on the Technology Sector Plan to the Ministry of Education, Cultural Affairs and Science (OCW). Over the past five years, many issues have been addressed, and above all there has been significant improvement. The Bachelor’s intake has grown by more than 30% and all three technical universities have made major reforms to their Bachelor’s programmes. Students are earning more credits each year, the drop-out rate has been brought back to an acceptable level and our degree programmes are extremely popular internationally.

As of the 30st of May, the 3TU.Datacentrum will be known as the 4TU.Centre for Research Data. The centre offers researchers a reliable long-term storage facility for technical and scientific research data. It creates opportunities to link publications to underlying data, thereby promoting improved findability and citability for research data. Researchers can turn to the data centre for advice and support on data management at any stage in the research process, ranging from setting up a data management plan or facilitating a data lab, to ultimately depositing the data in the archive. Datasets are automatically issued with a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to promote visibility, findability and citability. The 4TU.Centre for Research Data is an initiative of the three Dutch technical universities (Delft, Eindhoven and Twente) and also offers the above services to researchers at other institutions. For more information, please visit the website.