Team VERO part five

Marlous

Hi everyone! My name is Marlous Bood and I am a first-year master’s student Biomedical Engineering at the TU/e. To finish my bachelor’s degree, I have the opportunity to do my Bachelor End Project (BEP) with Team VERO. For my BEP, I wanted to do an experimental project that ideally contributed to society. Through team members I heard of the initiatives of Team VERO, and I was immediately enthusiastic to join this ambitious team!

During my BEP, I will compare several nebulizer systems that are commonly used for aerosol therapy in hospitals. I will perform experiments using a particle counter to visualize the aerosol deposition in the lungs of the patient. Besides, I will analyze and process the data from the experiments, which is going to be a time-consuming, but fun challenge for me. I am looking forward to the coming period and to work with this team!

René

I’ve been working at the TU/e in the department Biomedical Engineering for approximately 20 years. I was inspired by the tremendous ability of articular cartilage to carry extreme loads without becoming damaged. At the same time, we know that many people suffer from cartilage degeneration, and there is no suitable clinical solution for these patients. Working together with various research groups and with clinicians to develop solutions for this problem is great.
What inspires me a lot besides the contents of this research is to work with the Master- and PhD-students in these projects, and see how they develop. Obviously, this holds for all education, starting from the moment the students enroll in our department. This interest in education has lead to my appointment as director of education of both the Bachelor and Master programs Biomedical Engineering and Medical Engineering, two years ago.

As teacher, I’ve seen smaller and larger, slow and rapid changes in education, such as the development of our bachelor college. However, what happened during the Covid pandemic has beaten everything. Within a week we went from normal education via a few days without education to full online education. I worked night and day together with many people in the department and the university to get this done, and the continuous adaptation to the situation is still ongoing, 8 months later.
There were few things that kept me running in this crazy period. One of these is Team VERO, the interdisciplinary team with (ex)students that took responsibility to help in this crisis. It was with great pleasure that I could support these overly enthusiastic students to start their project. Meanwhile, they independently established an advanced experimental setup to measure aerosol release under various conditions, involved important contacts in their work, and are about to publish important results. Even more, they are even hosting some students for Bachelor end projects and internships. An amazing result, and it makes me proud to see that our students are capable to establish this.