Delft Energy Initiative

Hester Bijl

Hester Bijl, Chair Delft Energy Initiative

Prof.dr. Hester Bijl is the Chair of the Delft Energy Initiative. She is the head of the Department of Aerodynamics, Wind Energy and Flight Performance and Propulsion at the faculty of Aerospace Engineering. She is also Full Professor of Computational Fluid Dynamics in the same faculty. Her research in the field of computational simulations of flow dynamics can be applied to wind energy and the construction of aeroplanes, among other things. Hester Bijl serves on a number of different advisory bodies and boards, including the Supervisory Board of the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) in Petten. In addition to her impressive academic record, which includes over 40 scientific publications in international peer-reviewed journals, she has also made plenty of room in her career for promoting the sciences in the wider society. To name a few examples: she was a member of the panel of the Teleac''s televised science quiz Hoe?Zo!, and wrote a chapter for Robbert Dijkgraaf''s book De Bètacanon. 

Bijl wants to focus on bringing together different disciplines to find solutions to energy issues. "Multidisciplinary approaches often lead to surprising examples of cross-pollination. Just think of the way fluid dynamics and offshore engineering are combined in the case of wind farms at sea, or the combination of thermodynamics and urbanism in relation to the efficient use of heat."

Delft Energy Initiative

The Delft Energy Initiative is one of four Delft Research Initiatives. These have been set up to improve public access to research on the major social themes of energy, health, the environment and infrastructure, and to make research better attuned to issues in society. The Delft Energy Initiative provides access to more than 700 energy researchers at the TU Delft, representing a wide spectrum of energy-related research, from nuclear energy to sustainable building and from solar panels to studies of the electricity market.   

Get in touch with the Delft Energy Initiative