New PhD candidates

A warm welcome to our new PhD candidates! We would like to introduce them to you.

Jan den Hollander Hanya Spoelstra Bas den Hartigh

From left to right: Bas, Hanya and Jan

Bas was born in Alkmaar where he did his VWO, and moved to Utrecht for both his bachelor in chemistry and master in nanomaterials science at the Utrecht University. He performed his master thesis in the Inorganic Chemistry & Catalysis group where he now also started as a PhD candidate. His master’s research internship was performed at SINTEF, Oslo. His project is about the CO₂ hydrogenation reaction over Co/TiO₂ catalysts, and more specifically about the influence of the reducibility of the titania support on the overall catalytic activity. In his free time he likes to cook, play soccer, do some bouldering and play some video games.

Hanya Spoelstra (UU)

Hanya obtained both her BSc and MSc degrees in chemistry at Utrecht University. During her master thesis, she designed nanoplastics for fluorescence-based detection in the Inorganic Chemistry and Catalysis (ICC) group. During her studies, Hanya did two internships: at ARCNL after her Bachelor’s in the High Harmonic Generation and EUV science group and at Ketjen during her Master’s in the Exploratory R&D group researching catalyst support materials. In October 2023, she returned in the ICC group with her PhD within ARC CBBC, now working on the decomposition of methane in hydrogen and functional solid carbon.

Jan den Hollander (UU)

Jan was born in Rotterdam, temporarily moved to Darmstadt (DE) but ended up going to school in the Netherlands. He studied both Chemistry (BSc) and Nanomaterials Science (MSc) at Utrecht University, during which he mostly practiced electrochemistry and spectroscopy. To broaden his horizon, he has now (October 2023) started a PhD in a different subject: catalyst deactivation during steam methane reforming. He will mainly focus on developing in situ and operando techniques for honeycomb-shaped catalyst materials to gain more insight into catalyst deactivation processes like coke deposition or metal sintering. In his free time, he likes to play football, play video games, play ukulele or practice the guitar.