CO₂ and sustainably produced hydrogen have the potential to serve as an ingredient for converting electrical power generated by windmills or solar panels into a gas fuel. This ‘power-to-gas’ concept can solve two problems at once: it reduces CO₂ emissions while creating more flexible applications of sustainable energy. However, profitable conversion of CO₂ would require an extremely effective catalyst. MCEC members Bert Weckhuysen and Florian Meirer, together with researchers from BASF, Lehigh University in the United States, and the synchrotron facilities at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, have found a way to study the conversion process in detail and to determine the perfect size for the catalytic nickel nanoparticles. Their results will be published in Nature Catalysis.

Read more on the news page of Utrecht University in English or Dutch.
The paper can be found here.

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29 January 2018

The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW), who is responsible for the funding for the MCEC research program, has decided to allocate funding for MCEC until 2024.

This decision is a result of the hard work of all our MCEC Members, PhDs and PDs. A heartfelt thank you to all of them!

On behalf of the MCEC Management Team

20 December 2017

MCEC organized its first outreach symposium, on catalysis and sustainability, last 14 December in the Academy Hall in Utrecht. The first half of the day consisted of a Minisymposium meant for the MCEC Community and invited third parties, and provided in-depth lectures by Ib Chorkendoff (Technical University of Denmark), Regina Palkovits (RWTH Aachen University), and Karsten Reuter (Technical University of Munich).

Click on the pictures for an enlargement

The afternoon was aimed at a broader audience and open to anyone who was interested. Throughout the day, around one hundred guests were present for lectures by Ib Chorkendoff, Regina Palkovits, Peter-Paul Verbeek (University of Twente) and Ewald Breunesse (Manager Energy Transitions at Shell, who replaced Marjan van Loon who unfortunately was unable to attend). Cartoonist Paul Schenk summarized the event in drawings. The topics and views presented, the presence of some protestors, as well as the interesting and very in-depth questions from the audience, made for a lively discussion round that continued well into the closing round of drinks.

Click on the pictures for an enlargement

The speakers were interviewed by three of our MCEC PhDs. Their articles will be published in February 2018 via our internal newsletter, as well as on www.mcec-matters.com. (If you’d like to stay updated, please register for our newsletter.)

MCEC would like to thank everyone who attended for a great afternoon!

14 December 2017

Pictures by Lennart Weber and MCEC Office

Last 5 and 6 December, the MCEC Strategic Meeting was held in Veldhoven (the Netherlands). Discussion sessions of the project clusters were an integral part to the programme.

On the first day, Tuesday the 5th, all PhDs and Postdocs started their cluster session with a short presentation of their project. This provided a good overall insight into the progress of the various projects, its results, and short and long term goals. PhDs and Postdocs were invited to bring their own topics (e.g. certain challenges or desired collaborations) into the subsequent cluster discussion. The day was closed with dinner and drinks.

The second day, Wednesday the 6th, consisted of two parallel sessions: the PhD Community participated in a workshop about scientific integrity while the MCEC MT and MCEC Members held the Strategic Meeting.

“Dealing with scientific misconduct: a part of an editor’s day-to-day work”, was the title of Dr. Francesca Novara’s lecture for MCEC’s PhD Community. In it, Francesca Novara, Senior Associate Editor at Chemistry – A European Journal spoke about the responsibilities of authors, referees and editors in publishing.

Prof. Bert Theunissen (Utrecht University) presented our community with “Dilemma’s of the Scientist”, a game in which the participants had to make a choice in various interesting, awkward and/or suspicious, but lifelike situations.

During the Strategic Meeting, the process and results of the midterm evaluation were discussed and the members were informed about the possible research themes and other second phase plans that lie ahead.

MCEC would herewith like to thank the whole MCEC Community for their input, insights and overall contribution to this meeting.

6 December 2017

Click here to read the full article and/or to watch a video in which Bert Weckhuysen talks about his plans, and colleagues and students in turn talk about him.

30 November 2017

Last November 9^th, a group of ten MCEC PhD-students and postdocs visited the Avantium and AMOLF facilities in Amsterdam. Avantium was already introduced by its CEO, Tom van Aken, during MCEC School 2017 and now everyone had the opportunity to see how this company in Amsterdam Westpoort works on renewable and biobased products like the PEF-bottle. AMOLF is an academic institute at the Amsterdam Science Park for fundamental physics focusing on the “physics of functional complex matter”. The excursion was initiated and planned by MCEC’s Team Community.

9 November, 2017

The Catalysis Society of South Africa (CATSA) aims to recognize excellence in catalysis research by overseas scientists. In acknowledgement of their significant contributions, an Eminent Visitor Award is presented to an influential researcher at the annual CATSA conference. These awards include a lecture tour of selected universities and main catalysis research centres in South Africa.

The 2017 Eminent Visitor awardee is Prof. Krijn P. de Jong (Utrecht University). De Jong visits and lectures at universities in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban and the Sasol laboratories in Sasolburg. He is the plenary speaker of the 2017 CATSA Conference in Pilanesberg National Park and receives the award at the conference dinner.

Read more on the website of CATSA.

27 October, 2017

On behalf of the Education Committee, a warm thank you to all who participated in this year’s MCEC School. We look back on a very informative week in which we enjoyed a lot of interesting (guest) lectures from Bas Haring and Tom van Aken as well as research talks from MCEC members, and overall learned a lot of new things – who, for example, knew that SCUBA is actually the abbreviation of Super Cool Underwater Breathing Apparatus?

MCEC School was organized in Rhenen as part of the training program for MCEC PhDs and Postdocs. This year marked the third edition of this annual event, which contains basic and advanced lectures with emphasis on multiscale and multidisciplinary approach. To see the full program, click here.

Haring
The work of Bas Haring – Professor Public Understanding of Science at Leiden University – focuses on how science is best explained, from the scientist to the general audience. In his invited lecture on Monday night, Haring shared his vision about and tips and tricks on explaining science to laypeople. Keeping high school students in mind as the target audience in your communication is a good idea, for they can provide a frame of reference concerning a broader general audience.

PEF
Though Avantium is a relatively small company, it has a huge impact. For instance, they have developed a completely new, high-quality plastic made from plant-based industrial sugars: the PEF bottle (made from polymer polyethyl­enefuranoate). In his invited lecture on Tuesday night, Tom van Aken, CEO Avantium, discussed product development and marketing, and talked about biobased and renewable energy.

Trouble
The Trouble Shooting Cases turned out to be very helpful. To Vishak Chandra, Aditya Sengar and Edwin Dollekamp it brought new insights in how to proceed with their research approach; a pre-solution for Vishak to solve his challenge and a new approach for Edwin to fabricate a nano-electrode, including the offered help of his colleagues to be able to test this new idea. New MCEC PhDs Michel van Etten and Valery Muravev also presented their projects and discussed their ideas about their approach and possibilities for collaborations with the MCEC PhD Community.

SCUBA
Team Community organized a quiz on science, music, geology and sports. This is where we learned that SCUBA, the Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, is actually Super Cool. We also learned how to get a group of 38 MCEC students drinking a beer at the bar completely silent: by showing them only emoticons as a means to convey song titles.

Below, you’ll find some pictures of MCEC School. If you have pictures yourself, please send them to us. As every year, our PhDs and Postdocs have received a survey request to provide the organization with feedback.

We thank all speakers and attendants for their contribution to the success of MCEC School 2017!

2-6 October, 2017