Petra Keijzer (UU) is this year’s winner of the MCEC Poster Prize, awarded at the Annual Meeting. Her poster, titled Fundamental study on the synthesis of supported silver catalysts using melt infiltration, was chosen by the poster prize committee: Sander Huisman (UT), Jan Philipp Hofmann (TU/e), and Jovana Zečević UU).

An interview with Petra can be found here: Petra Keijzer Poster Prize Winner 2018

The MCEC Annual Meeting 2018 was held in The Gallery, Enschede. The programme consisted of lectures by tenure trackers Sander Huisman and Freddy Rabouw (UU), and an invited evening lecture by Barry Fitzgerald (TU Delft) on The Secrets of Superhero Science.

Throughout the two-day meeting, 20-minute presentations on the progress of their scientific work were held by fourteen of our PhDs/PDs and another twenty-three PhDs presented a poster. The Annual Meeting was also a good moment to introduce four new PhDs Alejo Aguirre, Vamsi Spardan Arza, Maarten Bransen and Valerii Muravev.

The organization would like to thank all participants for their attendance and contribution.

4-5 April, 2018

The Dutch Polymer Institute (DPI) in its DPI 2.0 Call for Proposals has granted Bert Weckhuysen, Florian Meirer and Elena Groppo (University of Turin) a joint research program entitled Multi-scale investigation of silica-supported ethylene polymerization catalysts during the early stages of the reaction.

The project aims to research polymerization catalysts in the early stages of the genesis of active sites and polymer formation by a multi-scale characterization approach under reaction conditions. The goal is to link the macroscopic physical and chemical properties with nanoscopic chemical properties.

4 April, 2018

The Alliance Fund between Utrecht University and Eindhoven University of Technology has awarded Bert Weckhuysen and Emiel Hensen 2 M euros for setting up a Virtual Research Institute (VRI) that integrates relevant expertise of both institutes.

The VRI has the ambition to become a leading institute in the field of energy technologies relevant to a fossil-free, low-carbon society. The focus will be on the further development of electrochemical energy conversion processes, with two interlinked research lines, namely inorganic electrochemistry and biomass-based electrochemistry. The VRI plans to strengthen the local MSc education programmes by offering a ‘Chemergy’ specialisation programme.

4 April, 2018

Volker Hessel (TU/e) has been appointed to the role of Deputy Dean Research and Level E academic in the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of Adelaide, Australia.

Read the full press release here.

18 March, 2018

MCEC has been granted a Cofund grant by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Cofund program; a grant from the European Research Council which is designed to stimulate excellence in researchers’ training, mobility and career development.

Students can obtain a joint PhD degree from two of MCEC’s participating universities.The grant, with a value of 1.7 million euros, will be deployed to attract and involve more international students to and in our research center.

Read the press release by Utrecht University here.

15 March 2018

Several MCEC community members have contributed to the programme of NCCC XIX in Noordwijkerhout (5-7 March). The 19th edition of the Netherlands’ Catalysis and Chemistry Conference (NCCC) combines a number of national symposia in the field of chemistry and catalysis. MCEC provided a dedicated session, chaired by Florian Meirer and Jan Philipp Hofmann. Robin Broos, Ahmed Ismail, Christa van Oversteeg, Roderigh Rohling, Evgeny Uslamin and Anne-Eva Nieuwelink were speakers on this event. You can read more about the programme, and find the abstracts of the lectures, here.

5-7 March, 2018

MCEC research ‘Temperature by Light’ has been mentioned in Nature Catalysis’ Research Highlights of March 8, 2018.

“The investigation of catalysts under working conditions is pivotal to optimizing and improving catalytic processes. Among the myriad of available in situ and operando techniques only a few can provide noninvasive local temperature measurements, and yet they fail at yielding high spatial and temporal resolution. Accurate determination of local fluctuations of the catalyst temperature allows for instance unveiling reaction and deactivation dynamics and heterogeneities in the catalyst. Now, Bert Weckhuysen, Andries Meijerink and colleagues at Utrecht University show that local temperature fluctuations can be measured in situ by making use of the luminescence properties of the catalyst.” You can read the article here (paid access only).

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8 March 2018

Sticky gels and other soft materials behave like fluids when ‘landing’ on a surface. This is really surprising, and it opens the way for a smart combination of solid state mechanics and fluid mechanics. Jacco Snoeijer received a ‘Vici’ grant for this, from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research NWO.

For this research project, Snoeijer now received a so-called ‘Vici’ grant of 1.5 million euros, for a period of five years. This is a grant for excellent and very experienced researchers, within the ‘veni-vidi-vici’ programme. It enables him to hire three PhD students and a post-doc researcher. The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research NWO received 233 proposals, of which 35 were selected in this round.

Congratulations, Jacco, on receiving this grant!

You can read more about the research on the website of University of Twente, in English or in Dutch.

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27 February 2018