Motivation Till Engelhardt

Till Engelhardt’s EngD thesis stood out internally to his supervisors, from the university and partner company alike, as well as the EngD coordinator for several reasons. His thesis combined engineering excellence, working on cutting edge technologies for sustainable and multi-use rainwater harvesting and aquifer storage, with solid technosocio-economic evaluations. Within his thesis, he showed great command of a vast range of topics required for his interdisciplinary research. This interdisciplinary approach that Till has made central to his research was greatly valuable to the project, as it allowed him to navigate between municipal, industrial and academic partners. He did not only deliver an excellent thesis, but his work also bridged sometimes conflicting visions from partners, ensuring that his final designs will be implemented in both the Netherlands and Spain. 

Referring to the engineering solution that Till worked on in his thesis, he faced the complexity and challenges of a dynamic urban setting. His innovation, combining advanced LED based treatment with urban aquifer storage and recharge, cannot be realized in a factory. It cannot be reproduced en-masse. It faces information scarcity, uncertainty in input and output and a highly dynamic system with many failure modes that can occur. Dealing with all these uncertainties, Till not only provided a robust solution but also did thorough risk-based analysis to ensure that his solution was safe to use, providing high-quality water to the cities of Alphen aan den Rijn and Madrid in periods of drought. He combined academic novel tools, including viral-based qualitative microbial risk-analyses, with pragmatic engineering, as should be central in the EngD work. The work from Till is being picked up by a new EngD student and will probably lead to an academic publication in the future.

To me, this shows that Till is, what I’d argue, the architype engineer that we need for a sustainable future. An engineer that is not only practical, problem-solving orientated, but more importantly someone who can navigate policy and stakeholders with the same ease as they can design high-tech solutions. By awarding Till the Kivi EngD Award, you would reinforce this idea of an interdisciplinary focused engineer as a necessity for the future of Dutch engineering practice. 

Till performed excellently during the entire two years. Taking initiative, integrating courses with his own design, and putting on his academic lenses whenever knowledge was missing. In conclusion, Till was an excellent EngD candidate who I can say, with support from the EngD community at the Civil Engineering Faculty of the TU Delft, is very deserving of the Kivi EngD Award.