Jan 2026

After more than 6 years working in Enschede at the University of Twente, I am starting the new year in Bremen in my new role as a researcher at the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM). My work at ZARM will be a part of The Martian Mindset excellence cluster aims to develop technologies to overcome extreme resource scarcity such as those expected during long-term human space exploration missions. My work package specifically looks at how to achieve electrochemical nitrogen fixation from the Martian atmosphere. Looking forward to this exciting new chapter in my academic journey.

May 2025

In my interactions with my colleagues at the PhotoCatalytic Synthesis group (PCS), I noticed that software development is often viewed as a chore and exposure to good programming practices is limited. Earlier, I introduced some group members to the basics of version control with Git. Now, I have taken the initiative to setup a research software repository for our group. The goal of the group repo is to:

1. 1. Improve code-reuse and prevent wheel-reinvention with each new project

   2. Standardize and facilitate rapid use of (shared) analytical techniques

   3. Make code publicly available to peer-researchers at other groups/institutions

The Gitlab group already contains useful software which simplifies the use of the Raman spectroscope and a shared HPLC - both of which use proprietary file formats which run counter to open-science goals. 

May 2025

In addition to an oral presenation on our work on aldehyde reduction, I had the opportunity to present a poster on gas-phase, reactive oxygen species-mediated methane oxidation on boron-doped diamond anodes. Credit is due to Dr. Adam Vass, a previous postdoc at the PCS group. The adoption of this indirect, gas-phase reaction scheme side-steps the problem of low methane solubility in aqueous electrolytes and leads to interesting possibilities at higher pressures - including the direct use of liquefied methane as the reactant.

March 2025

In an oral presenation at The Netherlands' Catalysis and Chemistry Conference (NCCC), I shared our recent results on the electrochemical reduction of butyraldehyde. Through in-situ Raman spectroscopy, we demonstrate to the audience that the butyraldehyde binds to copper electrodes in its diolate form. We also show the accumulation of an unknown copper-bound molecule at large cathodic potentials. This compound which disappears when the system is switched back to open-circuit. We posit that this is a pH-dependent aldol addition product. The presence of this class of molecules can pave the way for some interesting electroconversions including chain-lengthening!

September 2024

It's my pleasure to transition to the Photocatalytic Synthesis group at the University of Twente. Here, along with Prof. Guido Mul and Dr. Marco Altomare, I'll study the electrochemical reduction of biomass-derivable aldehydes into valuable platform chemicals. I look forward to working with the industrial partners Nobian and the Biomass Technology Group during this project. 

This new role fits into my long-term plan of conducting multiscale, multiphase electrochemical research. At PCS, I will be able to learn and apply spectroanalytical tools and work on a new line or research (organic electrochemistry) which I look forward to exploring further in future.

June 2024

Our recent work on exploring the use of silicon-based membranes for water electrolysis has been published in Sustainable Energy Fuels. In this paper, we show that with silicon lithography, it is possible to produce ultra-thin porous separators for water electrolysis. We explore the role of pore sizes and porosity on the separator resistance and demonstrate a proof-of-concept separator with good gas exclusion properties. 

April 2024

My team and I were recently interviewed by Daniël Linzel from C2W International - the official magazine of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society (KNCV), Daniël Linzel. In this article, we talk about our recent work on the electrochemical synthesis of alanine. The electrification of organic synthesis methods is a key step in the green transition.

March 2024

Happy to contribute to this article on the future of electrolysis written by Jim Heirbaut. It was a great opportunity to share some of our views on alkaline electrolysis and bubbles with a wider audience. 

February 2024

A great end to a great journey. It was a nice opportunity to meet the esteemed committee members and engage in a fruitful discussion during the defense. I look forward to the next steps in my academic journey. 

It has been a true pleasure working with my supervisors David Fernandez Rivas and Han Gardeniers who have offered timely and invaluable counsel over the years. Special thanks to the committee members for their valuable time, and to our many collaborators from whom I've learned a great deal. Thanks also to all my colleagues from our group for the many discussions - personal and professional - which have added immense value to my PhD journey. 

The thesis is available online here.

January 2024

It was a opportunity to meet other young researchers working on physics of bubbles at the NWO Physics conference. I presented our latest results on bubble evolution from patterened hydrophobic arrays. It was a nice to have a platform to share the results of my entire PhD trajectory with an eager audience.

In addition to the science, my supervisor David and I entertained the crowd with some Cuban music!

October 2023

It was a pleasure meeting fellow electrochemists at the ECS conference in Gothenburg. The meeting was a great platform to share recent results from our single bubble electrolysis study. 

June 2023

We have been awarded the Take-off Phase 1 grant by the NWO. Backed by our academic studies at the University of Twente, we aim to develop next-generation gas evolving electrodes for water electrolysis. This grant will allow us to conduct a feasibility study, and better position our innovation in the context of the broader market.

The grant application process was a rewarding experience. It was great to take a break from our usual academic presentations and deliver a commercial pitch to an expert panel. Pictured here are David and I right after the pitch at NWO.

November 2022

I had the privilege of spending a few weeks at the Thermal and Fluids Engineering department of the University of Carlos III in Madrid. Vanesa and I studied strategies to mitigate losses due to hydrogen evolution in aqueous redox flow batteries. 

UC3M was a great place to start a completely new direction of research - a task made much easier thanks to the expertise of Vanesa and Ange. Special thanks to Prof. Marcos Vera Coello for hosting me at the group.

December 2023

We are delighted to share the results of this collaboration with the Natan and Cintia from the LabMAC group at UFSC Brazil. In this paper in the Chemical Engineering Journal, we expand upon the previous experimental paper by developing an extended-moving mesh simulation to simulate successive bubble nucleation, growth and departure. This simulation sheds light on the mass transfer dynamics in the vicinity of electrolytic bubbles. Here, we show that the extent of the electrolyte saturated with hydrogen acts as a natural limit for efficient bubbles. 

September 2022

In this paper published in Electrochimica Acta, we share the results of a fruitful collaboration with the Physics of Fluids group at the University of Twente. Here, we study the successive evolution of hydrogen bubbles at a hydrophobic cavity surrounded by a ring cathode. Apart from a detailed analysis of the bubble growth kinetics, we quantify the change in ovepotential due to bubble evolution. The separation of the site of nucleation and the site of electrolysis allows us to quantitatively show that bubbles lower the concentration overpotential.