Dutch Research Council Backs TU Delft Projects That Could Reshape Cities and Technology
Delft, Tuesday, 2 June 2026.
NWO’s Open Technology Programme has selected new TU Delft research projects for funding in 2026, including a standout study challenging how we assess aging urban canal walls — potentially saving municipalities millions in unnecessary repairs.
A Funding Round With Real-World Stakes
On Tuesday, 2 June 2026, the Dutch Research Council (NWO) confirmed that a new set of research projects from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), located in Delft, the Netherlands, had been selected for funding under its Open Technology Programme (OTP) [1][4]. The OTP is one of NWO’s principal instruments for supporting applied technical-scientific research that carries strong potential for real-world application and knowledge transfer to industry [1]. The announcement, published on TU Delft’s official website and simultaneously reported by local Delft news outlet Oozo.nl on 2 June 2026, underscores the Dutch government’s continued commitment to channelling public research funding toward projects that address concrete societal and scientific challenges [1][4].
A Funding Round With Real-World Stakes
The OTP grants are specifically designed to bridge the gap between fundamental academic research and marketable, deployable innovation [1]. Crucially, OTP funding structures typically require the involvement of industrial partners [GPT], meaning these awards are not purely academic exercises — they are structured collaborations that bring universities and private-sector companies into joint pursuit of applicable breakthroughs. For Dutch start-ups, scale-ups, and established engineering firms, the selection of new TU Delft projects represents a tangible pipeline of co-development opportunities with one of Europe’s leading technical universities [GPT].
Crumbling Canals and Costly Assumptions: The CANALS Project
Among the newly selected projects, one stands out for its immediate relevance to urban infrastructure across the Netherlands: the CANALS project, formally titled ‘Historical Masonry Quay Walls Under Pressure: Rethinking Assessments for Resilient Cities’ [1]. The project is led by Dr ir. Rita Esposito of TU Delft’s Faculty of Civil Engineering & Geosciences (CEG), with Dr Francesco Messali — also of CEG — serving as co-applicant [1]. Both researchers are based at TU Delft in Delft, the Netherlands [1]. The project’s central premise is both technically compelling and economically consequential: current assessment methods for historical quay walls systematically underestimate their actual structural strength, which in turn leads to costly and often unnecessary repair interventions by municipalities [1].
Crumbling Canals and Costly Assumptions: The CANALS Project
The CANALS project will address this problem by studying how these aging masonry structures actually respond to real-world loads — including traffic pressure and soil settlement — through a combination of laboratory testing and advanced computer modelling [1]. The goal is to develop an entirely new assessment methodology that gives city authorities a far more accurate picture of a wall’s true condition before committing to expensive and potentially heritage-damaging interventions [1]. Beyond quay walls, the researchers note that the findings are expected to have broader applicability, potentially informing the assessment of other historically significant structures such as bridges, dikes, churches, and windmills — all of which face growing pressure from climate change and urban development [1]. For Dutch municipalities managing vast networks of aging canal infrastructure, a more precise assessment framework could translate directly into significant budgetary savings and better preservation of cultural heritage [1].
From Fingertips to Touch Screens: The Electrostatic Actuation Research
A second OTP-funded project emerging from TU Delft’s research environment focuses on a very different but equally consequential domain: the science of touch. A paper titled ‘Electrostatic Actuation Induces Competing Adhesion and Vibration Regimes at Fingertip Contact,’ published in the journal Advanced Intelligent Systems, was produced by researchers Celal Umut Kenanoglu, Michaël Wiertlewski, and Yasemin Vardar, affiliated with TU Delft’s Haptic Interface Technology Lab, and was funded by NWO under the OTP programme [3]. The research was announced and shared via LinkedIn, with the post confirming NWO’s OTP as the funding source [3].
From Fingertips to Touch Screens: The Electrostatic Actuation Research
The study tackles a long-standing gap in the understanding of electrostatic touchscreens — the technology used to create artificial tactile sensations on smooth surfaces such as glass [3]. For years, the dominant explanation for how electric fields make a surface feel sticky or rough was electroadhesion: the idea that electric fields increase the contact area between a fingertip and a surface, thereby modulating friction [3]. Using a custom-built instrument capable of directly imaging fingertip contact while simultaneously measuring friction under oscillating electric fields, the research team found that this explanation is incomplete [3]. Their results demonstrate that adhesion dominates friction only at high frequencies, while at the lower frequencies most commonly deployed in commercial touch interfaces, vibration also plays a substantial role [3]. These findings offer new design guidance for the next generation of tactile display technology — a field with applications ranging from accessibility devices for the visually impaired to advanced haptic feedback systems in robotics and consumer electronics [3][GPT].
NWO’s Broader Innovation Ecosystem in 2026
The TU Delft OTP funding announcements of 2 June 2026 do not exist in isolation. NWO is simultaneously advancing its broader innovation agenda through multiple channels. On 22 May 2026, NWO announced that the programme for its innovation festival, TEKNOWLOGY 2026, had been finalized, with the event scheduled for approximately 12 June 2026 [6]. At that festival, NWO’s ‘Open Mind’ grant session — described as a high-risk, high-gain funding mechanism — will see a maximum of 20 applicants pitch unconventional, out-of-the-box ideas to both the public and an assessment committee [6]. Following deliberation, a maximum of ten successful applicants will each receive a grant of up to €100,000 for one year [6]. The TEKNOWLOGY 2026 festival counts among its partners the Ministerie van Economische Zaken en Klimaat, Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland (RVO), Netherlands Academy of Engineering, Faculty of Impact, Techleap, ROM-Nederland, and KIA ST [6].
NWO’s Broader Innovation Ecosystem in 2026
Taken together, these developments paint a picture of a Dutch research funding ecosystem that is deliberately diversifying its instruments — from the structured, industry-partnered OTP grants awarded to TU Delft on 2 June 2026, to the more exploratory, high-risk Open Mind grants to be awarded at TEKNOWLOGY 2026 around 12 June 2026 [1][4][6]. For innovation professionals, technology companies, and academic researchers operating in the Netherlands, this multi-track approach signals that NWO is actively seeking to cover the full spectrum of the innovation pipeline — from rigorous applied engineering research to speculative, potentially transformative ideas that have not yet found a conventional funding home [GPT]. The TU Delft OTP projects, spanning masonry infrastructure assessment and haptic interface technology, exemplify precisely the kind of research NWO is designed to accelerate: technically rigorous, societally relevant, and built with one eye firmly on real-world deployment [1][3].