Featured

In addition to an overview of our community in our research map, we highlight some of our scientists in this section “featured”. Here you can find their personal stories behind the work that they do.

Kornelis Blok, professor of Energy Systems Analysis

“4TU.Energy should be a platform for young researchers!”, says prof. Kornelis Blok. Being a senior researcher, his advice is to develop a strong community offering researchers early in their careers an opportunity to meet fellow scientists outside of the usual habitat. The 4TU.Energy community offers inspiration and a certain freedom to explore new combinations of research that you might not easily have access to within the boundaries of a single university.

Kornelis Blok: “The motivation to collaborate should come from within. The research topics within 4TU.Energy and the diversity of energy research in the Netherlands give ample opportunities to explore and start these collaborations. We are here to provide basic support to get researchers started with testing ideas, support the organization of workshops and collaborative proposal writing."

Guanna Li, tenure-track researcher in Biobased Chemistry and Technology

Guanna Li is tenure-track researcher at Wageningen University in the field of chemistry. In her work Guanna constructs computational models to mimic the conversion of biomass fuel catalytic materials. Most of these catalytic materials are designed for fossil fuel conversion. For Guanna, her driving force is to make these input materials more renewable and to open up the black box of conversion.

“During my work I realised that if we want to transition from fossil fuels to renewable fuels with biobased chemistry, we need to do fundamental work on one hand, and work on applications in close collaboration with the industry on the other hand. This is where 4TU.Energy can play a role. My work in modelling the conversion process of catalytic materials is very fundamental, so I would like to team up with researchers who work with fuel production and I would like to connect with industry to optimize processes and reconstruct our energy systems.

Maartje Boon, postdoc in the Reservoir Engineering section

Maartje Boon works in the Reservoir Engineering section in the department of Geoscience & Engineering at TU Delft, where she holds a postdoc position and leads the ADMIRE hydrogen lab. This is her second postdoc position, previously she was a postdoc at the Energy Resources Engineering department of Stanford University. She obtained a PhD in Petroleum Engineering from Imperial College London.

"What keeps me going is (...) the notion that the energy transition is accelerating. You see fluctuating energy prices, a high sense of urgency in energy supplies. Everyone is much more geared towards the energy transition. This makes it worthwhile to work on this research topic. What I also like about it, is that the challenge calls for a multi-disciplinary approach to come with solutions."

Read the interview with Maartje here.