Last week, Qlayers got the opportunity to pitch a the final of the Offshore Wind Innovation Award 2018 during the Offshore Wind Q-meeting of Siemens and Van Oord. 

Unfortunately, Qlayers did not win the award. However, we still got very positive feedback of the jury. According to the jury, the innovation of Qlayers addresses an essential issue to make coating of blades in serial production more efficient. The jury particularly appreciated the well-developed business model and regards the basic principle of reducing coating use under controlled conditions with smart feedback data, very promising.

We wish the other two finalists, TWD and Fistuca, all the best with their future endeavors. Also, as the deserved winner of the competition, we wish Fistuca very good luck with launching their Blue Wedge connection into the market! ​​

Qlayers is selected as one of the three finalists of the Offshore Wind Innovation Award 2018! 

Fistuca, Qlayers and TWD will compete for the award for the most appealing innovation in offshore wind.

A jury of experts reviewed the applications on innovativeness, social and economic impact and entrepreneurship.

Both the jury award and the public award will be announced on Wednesday the 12th of December, during the Netherlands Offshore Wind Q-meeting of Siemens and Van Oord. In this Q-meeting, Qlayers will have 5 minutes to pitch our awesome innovation and ambitions. Lets do this! 

We are super proud and honoured to tell you that Qlayers won the ASN Bank Wereldprijs 2018! 

This means we won 16.000 euros with which we can hire a fulltime engineer who will help us scaling up the technology. 

Up to a world full of functional and sustainable surfaces!

Very happy to announce that Qlayers has been selected as one of Hello Tomorrow’s Top 500 deeptech startups worldwide in the New Materials track !This year, Hello Tomorrow had a record of over 4,500 applications from 119 countries. Being in the Top 500 means we are recognised as one of the most promising projects in deep tech to date. 

Jonathan Gnanadhas is our specialist in the field of electronics. He owns a bachelors in Electrical & Electronic Engineering and is finishing his master’s in Electrical Engineering in TU Delft with a thesis focused on Electromagnetics of Quantum Computing Hardware.  Jonathan is a real asset to the team and is packed with experience! He spent four years within the industry before starting his master’s, he worked at Broadcom and later at ABB. At both, he specialized in electronic hardware and embedded software development. After starting his master’s Jonathan wanted to keep his expertise on software in practice, so he started looking for cool projects to use his acquired skills on a daily basis. Luckily for Qlayers, he found a challenging project right here.
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In March 2018, Jonathan officially joined the Q-team. He is now focused on creating software for the controlled environment of the slash100. Jonathan is from India, but he has grown fond of the efficient and straight to the point style of the Dutchies. He really likes working at Qlayers, he appreciates that the start-up setting offers a workspace without bureaucracy where everyone can just focus on working. Furthermore, he loves the fun and energy that is always apparent in our young team. Jonathan is a real team player and always greets everyone with a smile!

Every other Thursday the Qlayers team gathers around the beamer, excitingly waiting for this week’s knowledge session. While drinking some beers, a presentation on a topic of interest is given by one of our team members. Last week, Bart enlightened us with a fascinating presentation on the measurement of particles. We learned about sensors, calibrations and the challenges particle measurement offer. Other presentations have been on aerodynamics, anti-icing microstructures and drag reduction tests. The presentations are meant to inspire, teach and help each other and to spark interesting discussions. Topics can be related to Qlayers but everything interesting, from nanoscience to yoga is allowed. The best part? Everyone is welcome! Our next knowledge sessions is on the 21st  of June, will we see you there? Click here to register. 

Every two weeks, we will post a blog about one of the Qlayers team members. This time, it's all about Derek. 
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24-year-old Derek Risseeuw loves to talk about aerodynamics. Whether it is about eddies, vortices or simulation programs, Derek knows it all. That’s why, when he first met co-founder Amber, they spent over an hour discussing the drag reducing mechanisms of Qlayers' sharkskin. Time well spent,  because since March 2018 we can call Derek our Aerodynamics Engineer.
At this moment, Derek is simulating the behaviour of paint particles in a flow to  make sure that no particles will escape the protected environment of the Slash100. In the future, he will also help with what inspired him in the first place; determining the optimal microstructure for aerodynamic efficiency.
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Only one of the many interesting things Derek has done before joining the company is his work for the Formula Delft team in 2015. Here he helped designing the aerodynamics of that years universities small formula 1 car. He and his team travelled to the Silverstone circuit (GB), the Hockenheimring (DE)  and the Red Bull Ring (AT) to see their car race against other others from universities all around the world!  

Next to his work at Qlayers, Derek is also writing his thesis on simulations of fluid structure interaction aimed towards flexible flapping wings. Conveniently enough his research and the work for Qlayers have a lot of overlap, which means he is in a constant learning process and many things he does has both value for the company and his own research.  When Derek is not busy solving complex aerodynamic problems he loves to play rugby or to go to the gym. 

If Birgit is not busy keeping our ‘Green Wall’ alive or telling us about the benefits of veganism this green lady is engaged in her research into viable market entry strategies. Birgit Henrich started working at Qlayers in March 2018, and next to her research she helps out with the marketing and business development. Our business development intern used to be a pro skier, who spend endless hours waxing her ski’s to win milliseconds by resistance reduction. With her current research, Birgit tries to enable Qlayers to reduce the resistance of something much bigger, namely: Aircraft. She hopes that her research will help Qlayers provide a more sustainable way of flying.

Birgit’s research is the end of her study ‘Science Business and Innovation’ at the VU University Amsterdam. The study is a combination of Beta-sciences, social sciences and  business courses. Birgit explains that the study is trying to bridge the gap between scientific research and the market by teaching you how to judge innovations by their market and societal value. She plans to start a master programme at the Delft University of Technology in September to deepen her knowledge in the field of technological innovation.  In the meantime, she tries to absorb as much experience as she can get here at Qlayers; "it is quite amazing to have the ability to learn so many things at once, I’m gaining experience in the field of business development but at the same time I’m learning about aerodynamics, 3D printing, networking, coatings, marketing and so much more."

Get inspired and visit our stand at the Hannover Messe on 25-26 April to meet Bart, Ruben and Mees and get some insights about our current developments and projects. 

Click here for more information about our stand. 
​See you there! 

Mees might not be a morning person, but for Qlayers our enthusiastic and resourceful mechanical engineer has absolutely no problem with the nine o’clock starting time. Mees is 21 years old and supports co-founder Ruben in the development of the Slash100, or as he likes to call it ‘The Slashie’. He finished his bachelors at the TU Delft in 2017 and now works full time for Qlayers. Mees got to know the company when he was studying abroad for a semester in Indonesia. By chance he followed a similar course as our co-founder Josefien and became intrigued by her story of Qlayers. Before he knew it, Mees used his Indonesian megabytes to skype with Ruben to discuss the possibilities of automated printing systems.
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In February 2018, Mees van Vondelen officially started working for Qlayers. Mees is definitely an allrounder and spends his days alternating between experimenting, building components and doing theoretical research. One of the things Mees appreciates about Qlayers is the flat hierarchy. Having the opportunity to influence the decision making process of the management is quite rare but a valuable and educational aspect for a young engineer. Describing the atmosphere of Qlayers, Mees would like to say that he cannot imagine that any of our employees would ever wake up with a reluctance to go to work!

After months of testing, Ruben was able to print our first sharkskin. Doesn't it look amazing? People have tried imprinting, machining, stickering and even lithography, since 1956, but they haven't been able to scale or customize. This might just be the first printing technique that can bring sharkskin to market! The qskin 1.0 helped us in making clients and investors fall in love with Qlayers in several speeddates we had during Meet the Startups event at YES!Delft.