Research

Research at TPM occupies a unique place at Delft University of Technology.
It is no longer enough for engineering curricula and scientific-technological research to focus exclusively on knowledge and artefacts. Given the key role that technological systems and components play in everyday life, it goes without saying that we need to constantly develop our insight into the corporate and societal context in which product design, innovation, and the application of technology take place. It is then essential to integrate this knowledge and insight in product and system design. In addition, many complex systems cannot be effectively understood and designed unless the interplay and between technological, organizational, economic, and other aspects is taken on board.

TPM focuses primarily on developing and disseminating knowledge about these interactions and integrates it with technological expertise and ideas. This results in an integrative, broad-based strategy for researching and designing socio-technological systems (combined rationalities), which has a clearly discernible profile among the research traditions at Delft University of Technology.

TPM is also unique because it does not gear its teaching and research to one specific domain or discipline, but rather to the development of generic, cross-domain knowledge about the principles of design and relationships within and between systems. At the same time, the design and analytical character of TPM research and its close links with technology set it apart from other research traditions which have developed in, for example, the social sciences.

Research at TPM comprises these main elements:

TPM research programmes
these consist of programme-based research aimed at the fulfilment of more strategic missions. They relate to the core business of TPM and constitute a consistent and recurrent element of the research activities as a whole. These programmes (and the objectives) serve as a framework not only for teaching and personnel policy and financial management but also for more targeted profiling.

Delft Research Centres
such as the Delft University of Technology spearheads which help to profile the institution as a whole.