Staff
After completing his PhD at Leiden University, with prof.dr. Marc Koper, and a postdoctoral stay at the Joint Center of Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) at Caltech, with prof.dr. Theodor Agapie and prof.dr. Jonas Peters, Ruud started his own group at Delft University of Technology in January 2018. His research interests are in electrochemical conversions that are relevant for renewable fuel production and the electrification of the chemical industry. With the help of mechanistical insights, modelling and theory predictions his group contributes to solving contemporary energy problems by developing new electrocatalytic systems and devices.
Associate Professor
Postdoctoral researchers
Ahmed joined the Kortlever group at Delft University of Technology in 2022 as a postdoctoral researcher. The position is a part of the Reversible Large-scale Energy Storage (RELEASE) project, and he is working on the electrochemical reduction of CO2 to ethylene and ethanol, developing reactors and large-scale systems that are capable of carrying out this reaction under industrially relevant conditions. Ahmed is a lecturer of Physical Chemistry at Alexandria University-Egypt where he received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degree in Chemistry. He was a master exchange student at Free University of Berlin-Germany with Prof. Dr. Christina Graf. Ahmed completed his Ph.D. in August 2020 at the University of Szeged with Prof. Dr. Csaba Janáky on the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide on gold-based bimetallic electrodes.
During 2016-2019, Shilong studied at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan and Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, Paris. He was awarded a double Master degrees of “New Energy Science & Engineering” from China and France. Shilong started his PhD in October 2019 in the Kortlever group, co-supervised by Prof. dr. Wiebren de Jong. His PhD mainly focussed on biomass-derived porous carbon materials for CO2 electrochemical reduction and was finalized in 2023. Currently, Shilong is a postdoc in the group working on electrochemical urea production from CO2 and nitrate.
PhD Candidates
In 2019, Boaz obtained his MSc Chemical Engineering degree from the Delft University of Technology. He worked for 7 months in the lab of Dr. Wilson Smith during his MSc thesis and studied ion transport behaviour in monopolar and bipolar membranes with electrochemical impedance spectroscopy with the primary goal to enhance electrolysis. Early 2020, he joined the Kortlever group as a PhD student and works now on electrochemical ammonia synthesis via nitrogen reduction. Mainly, he is interested in developing and using novel types of electro-catalytic materials to overcome the ammonia selectivity challenge.
Asvin hails from Kochi, a city in the south of India. He obtained his Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) degree in Chemical Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Raipur, India, in 2017. He then obtained his Master’s degree (M.Sc) in Sustainable Energy Technology, from TU Delft, in 2019, with a thesis on “Modelling of Multi-Tubular Fixed-Bed Reactor for Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis to Produce Synthetic Crude Using Syngas Obtained from the Work’s Arising Gases of an Integrated Steel Mill” with Prof. dr. Wiebren de Jong, in collaboration with Tata Steel Nederland B.V. He then joined the Kortlever group at TU Delft, in 2020, as a PhD student and focuses on the “Integration of Electrochemical CO2 Reduction Reactor into a Process System” co-supervised by Prof. dr. Wiebren de Jong. His research mainly addresses solvent selection for efficient electrochemical CO2 reduction, impact of feedstock and electrolyte contaminants on reactor performance, and process system modelling of large-scale reactor for industrial implementation.
Aleksandra joined the group as a PhD student in 2020 to work on the “C is for Catalyst” project. She obtained her bachelor diploma from Warsaw University of Technology (Poland) and continued with a master studies at the University of Stuttgart (Germany). She gained experience in working with carbon materials during her stay in Girona (Spain), where she investigated electrochemical application of reduced graphene oxide for removal of persistent water contaminants. Aleksandra’s current research is focused on investigating different carbon (support) materials for electrocatalytic reactions.
Iris joined the Kortlever group in 2021 as part of the RELEASE program. She obtained both her bachelor in Mechanical Engineering and Master in Process & Energy Technology from the Technical University of Delft. During her master thesis, performed at the University of Melbourne (Australia), she focused on the separation of hydrogen from natural gas by using pressure swing adsorption. In her PhD project she will focus on the integrated capture and electrochemical conversion of CO2, in which she will mainly focus on the process design.
Katie grew up in Toronto. She studied green process engineering (BESc) at Western University and business (HBA) at the Ivey Business School in London, Canada. After a year working in the sales and trading rotation program at Scotiabank, she moved to the Netherlands to pursue her interest in renewable energy technology.
In 2020, she completed a master's degree in chemical engineering (MSc) at TU Delft. Her thesis modelled cation effects on carbon dioxide reduction and was supervised by Dr. Ruud Kortlever. Katie joined the Kortlever group in 2021 as a PhD candidate. Her position is a part of the Reversible Large-scale Energy Storage (RELEASE) consortium, and her research is focused on optimizing gas diffusion electrodes for carbon dioxide reduction.
Coming from the Czech Republic, Vojtech first completed his BSc degree at UCT in Prague in 2019 and later obtained an MSc degree in chemical engineering from TU Delft in 2022. In his master's thesis, he focused on modeling CO2 electrolyzer and its upscaled version. Between 2022 and 2023, Vojtech worked at TU Delft as a research engineer developing CO2 capture from seawater. Finally, in May 2023, he started his PhD journey working on two topics, direct air capture using bipolar membrane electrodialysis and CO2 compression. He works in the group of Dr. David Vermaas and is co-supervised by Dr. Ruud Kortlever.