Yizhuo Wu won €100k NWO Open Mind Grant for EMI Lab

Very happy to share that our proposal, “The Living Radio Chip,” has been awarded a €100,000 NWO Open Mind Grant for a one-year, high-risk, high-gain research project.

This was an exciting journey. Out of around 140 submitted proposals, we were selected as one of the 20 finalists invited to pitch at TEKNOWLOGY 2026. Thanks to my PhD student Yizhuo Wu’s excellent performance in the pitch and Q&A, we were one of the 10 final teams awarded.

I am especially proud that Yizhuo, the main applicant of this project, was the only PhD student among the selected applicants without a doctor title. This makes the achievement even more special.

In this project, we will build The Living Radio Chip: a new type of wireless chip that can sense its own “vital signs,” learn what healthy operation looks like, detect drift caused by temperature, aging, interference, or changing environments, and adapt safely in real time.

Instead of designing radio chips to remain frozen from the day they leave the factory, we want to explore a new paradigm: radio silicon that learns, adapts, and stays efficient over time.

A huge congratulations to Yizhuo, and many thanks to NWO (Dutch Research Council) for supporting bold, outside-the-box ideas through the Open Mind program.

We can’t wait to show you what we will build in one year.