Pieter Roels
April 3th, 1985, a year no longer only known for it’s good wines. 5h48 in the morning somewhere in Hasselt. For the first time ever, he left the mother ship for a first short reconnaissance trip across the planet. He saw that it was good and decided to stay. Not in Hasselt, but in Cologne for the first 5 years of his young and inexperienced life. Afterwards he returned to his roots and after living in Wilsele for some years he moved to Heverlee, hometown of all that is good and pure. At the moment he enjoys the beauty of life, living in a student house in the centre of Leuven.
As a little boy, he started rebuilding lawnmowers into turbo-meadow-pirate-ships. In between these rebuilding projects this rascal also finished secondary school at the Heilige-Drievuldigheidscollege, a school located on the Oude Markt in the centre of Leuven. He then decided to take a higher education in Industrial Engineering at GROUP T University College. At GROUP T, yet again, he got the chance to build a turbo-high-tech-lawnmower. But this time it had to be a model capable of transporting 4 passengers, it had to be lightweighted and yet superstrong, with a minimum mileage of 200 mpg and fully recyclable. Another major requirement was crashworthiness, so being able to withstand the bumpy night rides through the meadows like in the good ol’days was not sufficient for this vehicle.
Designing, developing and building your own car, having ambitious goals laying ahead, coming up with inventive solutions to complex problems, facing huge challenges and working in team on the car of the future, building up international relations and making business trips to foreign countries… reasons enough for Pieter to give the VDS-project his full devotion and to spent all of his energy on the project (and of course on the fight for world peace as well).
Interests: Chatting with people, making noise, practising swimming pool sports and parties, bar tending and bar sitting, solving IT-problems (for a living), travelling, ...
Thijs Herteleer
Thijs was born at the 29th of April 1985. After a couple of years he started at the music school to take trumpet lessons. Because he had time enough after school, Thijs started also successfully the percussion courses. For trumpet as well as percussion, he graduated at the music school in Gooik and participated in many concerts with the orchestra and a brass band.
Beside this, Thijs was also very active in the youth movement ‘Chiro’ and later the ‘KAJ’. Because of the lack of sports, he trained many hours in the judo-club at Leerbeek.
At the age of 16, the technical prickles became too big, and he started the courses to become private pilot at the airbase of Grimbergen near Brussels. When he was 17 years and 8 months old, he accomplished his official first solo flight with a Cessna 152.
After one year at the university of Leuven, Thijs arrived at the GroupT Leuven Engineering College and he was from the beginning evolved with VDS. He confirmed to take the lead of the frameteam and the year after he decided his Thesis: Investigate the potential of bio-composites in a structural element, and compare the Life Cycle Impact compared to other materials.