The second Labtour on the 20^th of August at University Twente was a good opportunity to see how meetings and lab visits can create a common exchange of knowledge from the point of view of physicists, chemists and engineers.

Prof. Albert van den Berg gave a short introduction on the project cluster Nanoreactors and an insight in how certain techniques can make experiments running cheaper and more exact. Prof. Detlef Lohse did the same on the project clusters Nanobubbles and Fluidic Systems and explained more about the Ouzo effect.

Two individual projects were presented by Alvaro Moreno Soto and Edwin Dollekamp in the lecture hall as well as during the labtour on site, along with other research subjects and facilities. For example the 8m tall bubble column and why research on detaching bubbles from surface is relevant for catalysis; a high pressure nano reactor; several lab-on-a-chip projects; and how research is done on relevant applications like decreasing the fuel consumption of ships with several % by using a bubble bed under the hulk.

Dr. Jovana Zecevic is awarded a personal Veni grant by NWO. Jovana received the grant for her research entitled ´ Real-time studies at the nanoscale of the liquid-phase synthesis of zeolite-based catalysts´.

Professor Dr. Detlef Lohse was appointed as External Member of the Göttingen Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organisation at the 66th Annual Meeting of the Max Planck Society in Berlin on 17th-18th June. At the same time he was appointed as Member of the Max Planck Society (MPG).

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Aluminium lumps sabotage ‘assembly line’ in catalyst

An international team of researchers, among which prof.dr.ir. Bert Weckhuysen, was the first to make a detailed 3-D scan of individual aluminium atoms in a zeolite crystal.

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This assistant professor position is vacant in the Inorganic Materials Chemistry group (head of group prof. Emiel Hensen) of the department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry at Eindhoven University of Technology.

The aim of this new faculty position is to initiate a new research direction in computational chemistry of heterogeneous catalysis with an emphasis on the development of novel multiscale modeling approaches for catalysis and materials design. The focus will be on the development and application of mesoscale methods that bridge the gap between atomistic electronic structure calculations and macroscopic continuum models to arrive at a complete multiscale description of catalytic reactors. Read more

Albert van den Berg receives the prestigious ERC Advanced Grant for the second time. He will use this grant to cultivate blood vessels on a chip, made from ‘reprogrammed’ human stem cells.

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The first MCEC Labtour on the 10^th of June at Utrecht, with 34 participants, was inspiring. It was a great opportunity for the PhD students to meet and see the possibilities of the lab facilities and to learn about the research lines that the groups Inorganic Chemistry & Catalysis and Soft Condensed Matter are working on.

Dr. Pieter Bruijnincx (Utrecht University) and Dr. Niels Deen (Eindhoven University of Technology) presented the projects on the topic Biomass. The projects of the topic Future Methodologies in Catalysis & Solar Fuels was presented by Prof. Alfons van Blaaderen, Dr. Monica Barroso, Dr. Celso de Mello-Donega and Robin Geitenbeek (MSc) (Utrecht University). The presentation was followed by a labtour on site and it inspired the discussions during the reception.

At the University of Twente there are three new MCEC members appointed in a staff position. Xuehua Zhang en Roberto Verzicco are Part time Professors in the research group Physics of Fluids. Xuehua’s research area is “Colloid and interface science”. Roberto’s research research interest is “Numerical simulation of complex flows and turbulence”. Mathieu Odijk is appointed on a Tenure Track Assistant Professor position on “Micro- and Nanodevices for Chemical Analysis” within the MESA+ institute for Nanotechnology.

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Prof. Hans Kuipers has been appointed as one of the sixteen new members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). Membership of the KNAW is regarded as a great honor in a scientist’s career, and is reserved for excellent scientists in the Netherlands.

Together with the other new KNAW members, Kuipers will be installed on Monday 28 September 2015 in the Trippenhuis of the KNAW.

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Soft Matter and Biophysical Chemistry Award 2015 Winner

Nico Sommerdijk has been awarded for his seminal contributions towards a mechanistic molecular-scale understanding of macromolecular assembly and biomineral formation.

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