The High Tech Systems Center has earned itself a position at the interface of industry and academia. Although the target of 200 PhDs has yet to be achieved, the number of initiatives is growing every month. The High Tech Systems Center has now been in existence for three and a half years. The TU Eindhoven (TU/e) mechatronics center has attracted a lot of interest from industry. ‘We have become an acknowledged research center, a single point of contact that the business community can turn to with fundamental issues relating to mechatronics’, says TU/e professor and HTSC initiator Maarten Steinbuch. ‘We receive numerous requests from businesses who would like to visit, even from abroad. We’re very satisfied with our external visibility.’
Since its launch, the HTSC has provided 65 new PhD positions. Although quite an achievement, the center still has some way to go before reaching the target it set itself: doubling the number of PhD students specializing in high-tech systems from a hundred to two hundred. Part of this comes down to money. The HTSC had little to complain about the initial round of funding. It was able to rely heavily on the Impuls program, a TU/e initiative to conduct research with and for the business community. When an industrial partner invested in a PhD position, the university matched it by funding a second position. ‘That scheme no longer exists, but for the larger consortia that we are forming, we are able to achieve the same matching. The Executive Board sets aside funding by way of exception’, explains Steinbuch. HTSC director Katja Pahnke: ‘Reaching that figure of 200 PhD students will still be a challenge.’ Maarten Steinbuch and Katja Pahnke: ‘We are delighted with the visibility that the HTSC has achieved.’
