TUD
Delft University of Technology
TUD – The Delft University of Technology is a public legal entity following the Higher Education and Research Act (WHW). The main tasks include providing scientific education, conducting scientific research, transferring knowledge to society and promoting social responsibility.
The team
Ruud Van Ommen
ProfessorHe is a full professor at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), leading the Product & Process Engineering group. He obtained his PhD degree at Delft in 2001. He has been a visiting professor at Chalmers University of Technology (Gothenburg, Sweden) and the University of Colorado (Boulder, USA). Curing his career, he expanded his research from chemical reactor engineering to the scalable production of advanced, nanostructured materials. In 2011, he started an ambitious program (funded by an ERC Starting Grant) to investigate the interplay between agglomeration and coating of nanoparticles in the gas phase. The obtained insights have enabled steps in seemingly unrelated fields by his team in recent years: towards batteries with longer lifetimes, medicines with fewer side effects, and catalysts with higher conversion.
His group currently focuses on scalable production of nanostructured materials, particle technology and (electrochemical) reactor engineering.
Shilong Fu
Postdoc researcherHe joined the Kortlever group at Delft University of Technology in 2019 as a PhD candidate, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Wiebren de Jong and Dr. Ruud Kortlever. He worked on developing sustainable carbon-based catalysts for electrochemical CO2 reduction. Shilong completed his PhD in December 2023 and then continued as a postdoctoral researcher in the same group. He is developing catalysts and reactors for combining carbonate and nitrate reduction.
Ruud Kortlever
Associate ProfessorHe is an associate professor at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Large-Scale Energy Storage section of the Department of Process & Energy. He received his PhD from Leiden University in 2015, working with Prof. Marc T.M. Koper on “Selective and efficient electrochemical CO2 reduction on nanostructured catalysts”. Ruud then spent almost two years working as a postdoctoral fellow at the Joint Centre of Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) at the California Institute of Technology.
In January 2018, Ruud returned to the Netherlands to start his independent career at Delft University of Technology. His group is interested in electrochemical conversions that are relevant to renewable fuel production and the electrification of the chemical industry. With the help of mechanistic insights, modelling and experimental work, his group contributes to solving contemporary energy problems by developing new electrocatalytic systems and devices.
Zhimian Hao
Postdoc researcherHe earned his Master’s in Process Engineering from TU Delft and holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge.
His research focuses on scaling up emerging circular carbon processes and integrating them into existing industrial sectors. He has developed a systems engineering framework that combines process modelling, AI-based surrogate models, and multi-objective optimization to enable efficient process evaluation and decision-making under data-limited conditions.
Ana Somoza-Tornos
Assistant ProfessorShe has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) since 2022.
In 2020, she was awarded her PhD in Process Systems Engineering from the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC). Her thesis focused on the development of decision-making tools for the implementation of circular economy principles in process industries, with an aim to close the life cycle of plastic through chemical recycling. During her post-doctoral research Associate appointment at the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (University of Colorado Boulder, 2020-2022), she modelled and assessed carbon capture and utilization processes.
Her current group works on modelling and optimizing emerging technologies for circular economies, including waste-to-resource and emissions-to-resource processes.