
We are in the NEWS (30/11/2025)
GREAT NEWS 👉 our climate scientist Lesley De Cruz and our long-time partner Green Energy Park vzw are featured in the media VRT NWS, highlighting their work within FACT. With the new Flemish supercomputer now operating on the Green Energy Park campus, climate impact modelling is entering a whole new era 🌍⚡
Read more on VRT NWS: https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2025/11/30/supercomputer-rampen-waterbom/
Read more BRUZZ: https://www.bruzz.be/actua/wetenschap/vub-huldigt-nieuwe-supercomputer-genaamd-sofia-2025-11-28


Professor Herman Terryn (VUB) receives prestigious Evans Corrosion Award in Newcastle (7/10/2025)
Proud of Prof. Herman Terryn (Department of MACH Materials & Chemistry, research group SUME Sustainable Materials Engineering) for receiving the prestigious Evans Corrosion Award, internationally known as the “Nobel Prize of corrosion research”!
This recognition honors his groundbreaking work on the mechanisms and prevention of corrosion, with a major impact on both science and society. 👏 Congratulations to Prof. Terryn and his team!
Read more here

Our launch video on the opening of the VUB
Academic year (23/09/2025)
Thrilled to share that our short launch video of 'What is FACT' was part of the opening of the VUB Academic year 2025 - 2026
Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPIJCoND2ko


We won Gold at the Global AI Challenge 2025 for Building E&M Facilities
Thrilled to share that our team received the Gold Award at the Academic Track at the Global AI Challenge held in Hong Kong this August! 🇭🇰
The challenge?
👉 Predict 30 days ahead of cooling load for several commercial buildings — including those with limited historical data.
A tough task, especially in real-world conditions where data is sparse, and model explainability and robustness matter.
💡 Instead of relying on deep neural nets, massive training pipelines, or black-box models, we took a different path.
🚀 We developed the Adaptive Similar Day (ASD) method — a training-free, interpretable, and blazingly fast approach that:
🔹 Uses only air temperature
🔹 Finds and averages historically similar days
🔹 Applies a temperature-aware scaling adjustment
No training. No backprop. No heavy ML packages.
A Top5 result. 5000 USD prize money.
We’re proud to show that simple + smart can sometimes beat complex + opaque, and that classic ideas like similarity-based modeling still have a lot to offer when thoughtfully adapted.
Big thanks to the organizers, the judging panel, and the EMSD for an incredible experience and hospitality in Hong Kong


Reformers Wins the World Hydrogen 2025 Prize – Clean Project Category
We are thrilled to announce that Reformers' Flagship Energy Valley in Alkmaar has been awarded the World Hydrogen 2025 Prize in the Clean Project category! 🌍⚡ This recognition highlights our commitment to innovative, sustainable hydrogen production and acknowledges the groundbreaking work of our partners, including Vrije Universiteit Brussel, NXT Mobility, New Energy Coalition, HYNOCAP®, powered by Haffner Energy, and STOFF2’s Zinc Intermediate Step Electrolysis technology.

Lesley De Cruz becomes the new WATS (Women Award in Technology and Science) ambassador for Brussels
Read the full acticle here (in Dutch)::https://urbanclimate.be/posts/2025-03-08-wats/