DTU celebrates talented students at Blue Dot diploma ceremony

International awards for DTU students

The students take turns taking the stage to present their projects to the sound of cheering fellow students.

The first team on stage is DTU Wind Racers, who have built a wind-powered car. In August, they travelled to the Racing Aeolus competition in the Netherlands to compete against other universities in propelling vehicles with the power of the wind. Although they were able to take home silver in two categories and third place overall, there were also hard-earned lessons learnt.

DTU Wind Racer's Mathias Gustaf Johannesson makes this clear from the stage:

“You get to see your projects fail, but you learn a lot from it,” he notes, after explaining that one of the wings on the wind-powered car had broken due to very high wind speeds on the Dutch coast.

The team behind the DTU Roadrunners also take to the stage with big smiles. In April, they took first place in the Urban Concept Internal Combustion Engine category at the Shell Eco-Marathon with a car that can drive 413 kilometres on a single litre of ethanol.

When it's DTU RoboCup's turn to present, they talk about their work on getting robots to complete obstacle courses and solve tasks on time. At the beginning of the year, for example, a team from DTU RoboCup was in Abu Dhabi for the MBZIRC Maritime Grand Challenge, where the robots had to compete on water. They were one of five finalist teams.

Rocket science and students on bottle

Common to all the projects is that the students put a lot of hours into them. At the same time they are run in collaboration across semesters, study programmes and fields of study. And although all Blue Dot projects look towards a sustainable future, one project has ambitions in an upward direction.

When you're dealing with rockets, there are many factors at play. That's why the rocket builders from DanSTAR haven't managed to launch one this year, due to changes of plans with one of their partners. They expect to do so in 2025. Launching a rocket is a process where a lot can go wrong, which means the students are very meticulous in their work.

“We do endless amounts of testing before we see actual fire,” says Eskil Mathias Rasmussen from DanSTAR as he stands on stage, having cheekily remarked that they are doing rocket science.

After the last team has received diplomas and had their pictures taken, there is time for the students to meet each other across projects.

The ceremony is rounded off with some food and drink for the many talented students, but not before Lars D. Christoffersen gives a final word of praise:

“I wish I could squeeze you and bottle you, because then I could pass on your drive and curiosity to all the students here at DTU.”

Read more about DTU Blue Dot here.