In July, three of our PhD candidates travelled together with prof. Petra de Jongh and prof. Krijn de Jong to Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium for PREPA13: International Symposium on “Scientific Bases for the Preparation of Heterogeneous Catalysts”. On the first day, Luc Smulders gave the first plenary lecture on “Advanced preparation of metal-acid bifunctional catalysts to control metal nanoparticle location”!

Later, Claudia Keijzer presented her work on “High surface area alpha-alumina: effect of carbohydrate template size and heat treatment on phase purity”, and Kris Helfferich presented a poster on “Alloyed Pd-Ni/SBA-15 nanoparticles for cinnamaldehyde hydrogenation”.