Master of new knowledge

Edmundo Molina Pérez, 26, from Mexico, studied MSc in Engineering and Policy Analysis at the Technology, Policy and Management Faculty. Before joining TU Delft, he earned a BSc degree in Civil Engineering at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Unam), and then worked in the private sector for three years before deciding to continue his studies at TU Delft.

During his tenure at TU Delft, he specialized mainly in renewable energies resources and technology policy analysis, graduating cum laude and obtaining an 8.5 for his MSc thesis, while also pursuing a research track. As a TU student, he also found time to participate in the prestigious Harvard National Model United Nations (HNMUN), as one of only three delegates from TU Delft.

Following his stellar academic career at TU Delft, Molina Pérez has recently moved on the Pardee Rand Graduate School (PRGS), in Santa Monica, California, where he will pursue a PhD degree. Founded in 1970, PRGS is unique in US higher education, as one of the original eight graduate programs in public policy and the only one based at a public policy research institute — the Rand Corporation, an independent, nonprofit institute that helps improve policy and decision-making through research and analysis, while featuring a research staff consisting of some of the world’s preeminent minds, including numerous Nobel Prize winners both past and present. Rand’s focal points include key global issues, such as health, education, national and international security, and the environment.

Molina Pérez believes his studies at TU Delft were an important “breaking point” in his academic career. “I was lucky enough to study in a vibrant faculty in which multi-disciplinary analysis was the rule,” he says of his years spent at the TU’s faculty of Technology, Policy and Management (TPM). “During my TU Delft studies I enriched my understanding of technology policy issues by systematically analyzing these problems from a social, economical and an environmental perspective. In addition, I joined a class of extremely talented students – almost all had scholarships – with multiple cultural and technical backgrounds, which made the learning process in the classroom exciting and adventurous.” 

He firmly believes that the quality of teaching, academic life and the student environment at TPM are top quality at the international level: “I feel very proud of having studied at a faculty that is doing pioneering research in technology policy analysis.”

Molina Pérez attributes a great proportion of success in the classroom to the environment at TU Delft itself. “However, I’d also add that support from family and friends are vital elements to be immersed 100% in academic work,” he adds. “In addition, I believe that passion for knowledge is also a key element for success. I liked getting good grades, but to be honest, grades are meaningless. True reward and motivation comes from mastering new knowledge, and from using this knowledge to challenge our views of our world, to critically gain new insights. After some time at TU Delft, I realized my main motivation was to pursue new knowledge, to look for lectures and research projects that were appealing and challenging enough for me.”

He also says that being able to learn ways for solving environmental and social problems was also a vital element his success at TU Delft. “Simply put, I felt that through my studies I was doing something that could help to make a difference for the better in this world.” 

As for his future plans, during his PhD program in policy analysis at PRGS, he intends to continue learning ways in which sustainable energy technologies can be implemented on a large scale to fight climate change. “More specifically, I’ll work on developing new analytical methods to provide useful long term analysis for developing countries in these issues. I’d like to consolidate a career as a technology policy researcher.” 

As for any recommendations to improve TU Delft, Molina Pérez says only that “all students at TU Delft must understand that this university offers high quality education. I can personally compare the education offered at TU Delft with some of the best universities in the United States and Mexico, and I can proudly say that the infrastructure, the resources and the teaching are at equiparable levels. It’s up to students to make sure they exploit these resources, which in many places of the world are scarce or actually inexistent.”

 

What proteins and metabolites are present in a cell and which genes are active? And: do certain proteins interact with each other? In modern molecular biology, scientists conduct all kinds of experiments to gather data that lead to better understandings of intracellular activities.

“Yet due to the complexity of the cell and limitations of the measuring techniques, these data are often noisy and incomplete”. says researcher Yunlei Li. “Dealing with these noisy data poses a major challenge.”
Li has faced that challenge. Until recently she worked as a PhD student at the Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics department (faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science). Next week she will defend her thesis, titled ‘Exploiting noisy and incomplete biological data for prediction and knowledge’.

Li developed a computational program with which she compared the metabolic networks of yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisae) with that of a bacterium (Escherichia coli). One of the metabolic pathways she looked at was glycolysis, which is the pathway that generates energy in almost all organisms by burning glucose.

“Throughout evolution this pathway has hardly changed because it’s so crucial for the functioning of organisms”. Li explains. “If you find differences here between species, this can either mean that you have stumbled upon the limitations of the measuring techniques that lead to false data or that you have found a very interesting evolutionary change.” Either way the computer model can help biologists conduct their research, Li believes.

Part of Li’s work consisted of chopping up the metabolic networks of both species into small building blocks of just several matching reactions. It may have taken scientists blood, sweat and tears to map all reactions (about a thousand for each of the two species) and create networks, but Li wanted to start with a clean slate.

Her algorithm searches for new possibilities to connect the pieces – as if it is playing with Lego bricks – and provides information about the likelihood of the connections and the similarities of the connected reactions.
According to Li, her work was one of the first attempts to conduct a systematic alignment of the full metabolic networks of multiple species.
More experiments are needed to validate the model, however, and that bothers Li somewhat: “I’d like to find out faster if it works or not and whether people will use it.”

Li has also decided to make a career change. She now works in the field of performance and risk assessment for a consultancy and software company, specialised in finance. If biologists don’t listen to her, hopefully bankers will.