
Three of our group members passed a first aid exam as an addition to their BHV training. It was challenging, but it was also enjoyable to learn how to deal with a variety of injuries and illnesses. While we of course hope to never need this knowledge, it’s best to be prepared. (December 2021)
Jessi van der Hoeven was awarded the KNCV Van Arkel prize at the Soft Matter session of the NWO CHAINS conference for her thesis “Gold based Nanorods, Tuning the Structure for Catalysis and Sensing”. The van Arkel Prize is awarded for the best thesis in the field of Physical and Inorganic Chemistry of the past two years (December 2021).

We are proud of our MCC group members shining at the NWO CHAINS2021 conference! Featuring Nong and Peter as chairs of the parallel sessions, Nienke and Valerio giving excellent talks, and our poster presenters Luc, Oscar, Just, Laura, Maaike, Hidde and Daan discussing their work in the virtual Gather Town world! (December 2021)

On Friday 15 October 2021, prof. dr. ir. Krijn de Jong gave his farewell lecture in the Domkerk. The lecture can be found here (starting after 18 minutes).

Since last summer, we have been reinforced by Tom Welling, who works on gas-cell EM studies of methane decomposition during carbon nanomaterial growth as a postdoctoral fellow, and Lappawat Ngamwongwan, a new PhD student who combines machine learning and DFT to study electronic and ionic transport in battery materials.

After a Covid-19 induced year of mostly online lectures, physical lectures have finally started again. Last week saw the first lectures of both the Advanced Catalysis and Nanomaterials courses with great attendance. This brings a great relief to both students and lecturers to which online education posed an obstacle. We are looking forward to the upcoming lectures.

As life is slowly getting more normal again, Savannah, Kristiaan, Min and Nienke had the chance to travel to Paris last week for their first real-life conference since the start of the pandemic! The scope of the CISCEM conference was to discuss in-situ electron microscopy, which is used to image materials on the nanoscale under realistic atmospheres (liquids and gases). Savannah gave a great talk about her study of the genesis of nickel catalysts with in situ liquid and gas phase TEM, well done! This conference was a fantastic opportunity to finally discuss science again in person and to explore Paris. Fingers crossed that more (international) conferences can be organized live again soon. (17 Sep. 2021)


Meer lezen over de toekomst van duurzame energie? Hier vind je een aantal interessante longread van de Universiteit Utrecht, met onder andere bijdragen van MCC en andere groepen uit het Debye Instituut.
The European Federation of Catalysis Societies (EFCATS) announces that – after nomination by the Dutch Catalysis Society – Dr. Carlos Hernandez Mejia has been selected as one of the three prize winners of the EFCATS Best PhD Thesis Award. More information on this EFCATS award can be found here.

This June, we welcomed Remco Dalebout back into our group as technician specialised in chemical analysis. Previously, he was a PhD candidate in our group.

Since the beginning of this year, we have welcomed three new PhD candidates in our group. They are Masoud Lazemi, Claudia Keijzer and Yuang Piao. Masoud works on X-Ray spectroscopy, specifically femtosecond XAS and RIXS of transition metal oxides using X-Ray Free Electron Lasers (XFELs). He is supervised by Frank de Groot and Uwe Bergmann (University of Wisconsin-Madison). Claudia’s project is about ultra-pure and structured porous materials as catalyst supports. Yuang works on bimetallic catalysts for the catalytic conversion of syngas into DME via methanol. Both Yuang and Claudia are supervised by Petra de Jongh.

In April, we also welcomed Sylvia Visser as a part-time secretary in our group. Besides working for MCC, she also works for the Physical and Colloid Chemistry group (PCC/FCC).

We are happy that Ad van der Eerden also supports our group as a technician. Only a few months after his retirement, he returned to our group in May 2021 as a part-time employee.

Debye physicists and chemists control catalyst structure at the atomic scale – Novel core-shell catalyst design published in Nature Materials. The work of MCC group members Jessi, Liselotte, Giorgio and Petra, together with the team of Alfons van Blaaderen and others appeared today. More details can be found here.
Op woensdag 28 april was Petra de Jongh te zien op NPO2 in het wetenschapsprogramma Atlas, om uitleg te geven over de rol van duurzaam waterstof in de energietransitie (in het Nederlands, item start op 13:38). Waterstof kan daarin een spilfunctie vervullen, omdat het fossiele brandstoffen en grondstoffen kan vervangen in de industrie, zwaar transport, en bij grootschalig opslaan van hernieuwbare elektriciteit, maar de eerste grote uitdaging blijft voorlopig om voldoende groene elektriciteit op te wekken.

Laura Barberis, PhD candidate of Petra de Jongh and Frank de Groot, won the poster prize with her poster “Particle size effects for copper-catalyzed CO2 hydrogenation to methanol” at the Faraday Discussion Carbon Dioxide Utilisation (April, UK). Congrats! (April 2021)

We are in the process of dividing the group of Inorganic Chemistry and Catalysis into two new groups, Materials Chemistry and Catalysis (MCC) of Petra de Jongh, Krijn de Jong, and Frank de Groot, and Inorganic Chemistry and Catalysis (ICC) of Bert Weckhuysen and Eelco Vogt. This allows for more focus in research and efficiency in management. You have reached the temporary website of the new MCC group, that of the new ICC group can be found here. (2021)
The Alliance team, led by Sanli Faez and of which Peter Ngene is a member, receives a SPARK grant to create a radically accessible open-hardware platform for redox-flow batteries (March 2021).
In 2021 the Dutch Catalysis Society (sectie Katalyse of the KNCV) has awarded the KNCV-DCS Thesis Award to a talented young researcher. The award has been presented to Carlos Hernandez Mejia (MCC, promotor Krijn de Jong) during the 22th NCCC conference that took place online on March 1, 2021. The title of his thesis reads “Niobia-Supported Metal Catalysts for Synthesis Gas Conversion”. In the consideration of the international jury it was mentioned that the depth and methodology of the study of the metal support interaction was considered exemplary. The award comes with a certificate as well as € 1250 to be used for advancement of science. Congratulations to Carlos for this well-deserved award! (March 2021)
Petra de Jongh appointed as member of the Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen
Members of the KHMW are responsible for organising activities that shorten the distance between society and the scientific community. The UU press release can be found here. (in Dutch)Read more 03 May 2018
Next Einstein Forum Fellow Award and Alumnus of the month nomination for Peter Ngene
Peter Ngene is one of the seventeen ‘Next Einstein Forum’ Fellows 2017-2019, for Africa’s most outstanding and promising young scientists. On 27 March, he received the award from Paul Kagame, […]Read more 19 April 2018
Prof. Petra de Jongh is elected as a new member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Prof. Petra de Jongh is elected as a new member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, recognizing her important work on nanomaterials for catalysis and energy storage […]Read more 23 January 2018
Two NWO projects awarded to the ICC group
Two projects within the NWO Materials for Sustainability Research program have been awarded to the ICC group: Baira Donoeva will work with Bastian Mei (UT) in collaboration with HyET on […]Read more 13 September 2017
Volkskrant: interview with Petra de Jongh
An article appeared in the Volkskrant (in Dutch) about work in the group of Petra de Jongh regarding sustainable energy conversion and storage. It focuses on the search to develop […]Read more 11 September 2017
Prize for best MSc thesis for Maarten Branssen
Maarten Branssen, MSc student onder Jessi van der Hoeven in een samenwerkingsproject tussen Alfons van Blaaderen (Soft Condensed Matter) en Petra de Jongh (Anorganische Chemie en Katalyse) heeft met zijn […]Read more 18 May 2017
Thesis defense Peter Bramwell, 22 May 2017
Peter Bramwell will defend his dissertation, entitled “Pore-confined light metal hydrides for energy storage and catalysis”. Date and Time: Monday, May 22, 2017 at 10.30 AM. Location: Academic Building, Domplein […]Read more 24 April 2017
Petra de Jongh contributed to the book “Hoe zwaar is licht?” (What is the weight of light?)
In het boek “Hoe zwaar is licht?” worden 100 vragen aan “de wetenschap” beantwoord. Beatrice de Graaf en Alexander Rinnooy Kan, hebben in 2015 alle Nederlanders opgeroepen om alles wat […]Read more 05 April 2017
“Meet the Professor” with Petra de Jongh
(Professor Petra de Jongh (links) met groep 8 van de Daltonschool in Rijnsweerd. Foto door Jade Heister). Op 29 maart, bezocht Petra de Jongh een basisschool […]Read more 15 March 2017
Baira Donoeva invited to attend the 67th Lindau Nobel Laurate Meeting.
Baira Donoeva, a Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellow at the Inorganic Chemistry and Catalysis group, is selected by the scientific review panel of the Council for the Lindau Novel Laureate Meetings to […]Read more 09 December 2016
Our battery research on TV at NPO program EenVandaag
Petra de Jongh appeared in NPO’s broadcast “EenVandaag” on October 21, 2016. She talks about her research on a new generation of Lithium batteries. De onderzoeksgroep van Petra de Jongh en […]Read more 01 September 2016
Inaugural Lecture of Prof. Petra de Jongh on September 16, 2016
With her lecture, Professor de Jongh will officially be inaugurated as Chair in Inorganic Nanomaterials. The inaugural speech is entitled “Nanomaterialen: De Kracht van het Kleine” (“Nanomaterials: Small is Beautiful”). […]Read more 27 July 2016
Jessi van der Hoeven et al publishes in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Carbon monoxide sets platinum atoms in motion Catalysts are often made of expensive precious metals, which work most efficiently when very small particles of the metal are fixed to a […]Read more 30 May 2016
Van Arkel Prize for Peter Ngene
In his thesis, Ngene discusses solutions for the challenges of using complex hydrides for reversible hydrogen storage in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and for stationary energy storage applications. The van […]Read more 14 January 2016
NWO-ECHO grant for Petra de Jongh
Petra de Jongh and colleague researchers from RU Nijmegen receive the NWO-ECHO grant on theresearch topic ‘Nanoconfined complex metal hydrides as fast ion conductors for all-solid-state batteries’. A new generation […]Read more 23 February 2015
ERC grant for Petra de Jongh
The ERC awards this prestigious European grants to experienced scientists who perform high-quality and innovative research. With Petra receiving this grant, all four professors of the group Inorganic Chemistry and […]Read more 31 October 2014
Nanoconfined LiBH4 (lithium borohydride) as a fast lithium conductor
The chemists from Utrecht University have discovered a way to make the solid substance lithium borohydride (LiBH4) more than 1,000 times as conductive at room temperature. This discovery was made […]Read more 30 September 2014
Short Stay PhD Fellowship grant for Nazila Masoud
As part of her research project, Nazila Masoud visited Utrecht University Partner (UUP) Laboratoire de Reactivite de Surface (LRS), Sorbonne Universite in Paris (France). Nazila Masoud […]Read more 12 February 2014
Petra de Jongh Chair of Inorganic Nanomaterials
Petra de Jongh has been appointed chair of Inorganic Nanomaterials at the Department of Chemistry and the Debye Institute for Nanomaterials Science, effective February 1. De Jongh is an expert […]Read more