Former members

Former members belonging to the AXES research group (until 2021, spokesperson K. De Wael) or A-Sense Lab (since 2021, spokesperson K. De Wael):

em. prof. dr. Freddy Adams (Belgium) has been Emeritus Professor and Honorary Rector of at the University of Antwerp, Belgium (UA) since the end of 2003. He is also co-founder of the centre of Micro- and Trace Analysis (MiTAC) serving as its director from 1980 to 2003. His research interests include instrumental microscopic analysis with beam techniques and synchrotron X-ray sources; ultra-trace speciation analysis; applications in materials sciences, environmental chemistry and archaeology. Professor Adams is a co-author of 5 books and ca 500 publications in the international scientific literature.

dr. Jahangir Ahmad Rather (India) was a postdoctoral (belspo non-EU) researcher in our group from January 2012 till April 2013. His research at UA focused on the development of electrochemical sensors for the detection of endocrine disruptors in wastewater and sludge. Now, Jahangir is assistent professor at .

dr. Songül Akbulut (Turkey) has visited the lab as a PhD-student (Socrates Erasmus Scholarship) several times in the period from 2009 till 2012. She is now an assistant professor in Recep Tayyip Erdogan University, Rize/Turkey.  Her current subjects are X and Gamma ray spectrometry, environmental toxicology and radioactivity research and cancer dynamics. 

dr. Matthias Wilhelm Alfeld (Germany) visited the group in the first half of 2006 as an ERASMUS exchange student and returned in October 2008 to pursue his PhD in a joint PhD program with the University of Hamburg. He left the group in summer 2013 after submitting his thesis to take a PostDoc position at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, Germany. He successfully defended his thesis it in November 2013.

During his PhD Matthias developed instrumentation for XRF imaging, using Synchrotron and X-ray tube sources and full-field and scanning concepts. His work focused on the investigation of large areas (several 100-1000s cm2) on the surface of historical painting, for which he constructed the first mobile XRF scanner that allowed to do these investigations in only a few hours. Next to the development of instrumentation he wrote dedicated software for the evaluation of XRF data of historical paintings and collaborated with art-historians and conservators in the interpretation of the elemental distribution images obtained.

dr. László Bencs (Hungary) had worked as a postdoctoral/guest researcher in our group for 6 years between 2001 and 2011. His main research interest encompassed the chemical characterization of atmospheric aerosols and gaseous air pollutants, in terms of studies on indoor air quality, preventive conservation, ship emission and N-nutrient deposition at the North Sea. He presently holds a permanent position as a senior researcher at the Wigner Research Centre for Physics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

dr. Simone Cagno (Italy) has worked several years in our group. He arrived as a Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher in 2007, and defended his PhD in May 2012. His research interests comprise the study of historical glass (composition, provenance, alteration phenomena) and the study of heritage materials by means of micro- and nano-analytical techniques.  He was also organizer of the YOCOCU conference (YOuth in COnservation of CUltural heritage) that took place at the Hof Van Liere in June 2012. After a short period as a postdoctoral researcher in AXES, in October 2012 he moved to the Centre of Excellence for Environmental Radioactivity (CERAD) of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in Ås, where he focused on the characterization of radionuclides and nanoparticles in the environment and in biota. 

dr. Larysa Darchuk (Ukraine)

dr. Wout De Nolf (Belgium) implemented X-ray powder diffraction imaging at AXES during his PhD studies which he successfully completed in October 2013. In the transition from black-and-white (non-chemically specific) X-ray imaging to "colored" (chemically specific) X-ray imaging, diffraction had gained attention after the successful application of X-ray fluorescence for imaging. His main contribution resulted in a software packages named "XRDUA" which is designed for the data analysis of X-ray powder diffraction imaging in 2D-mapping and tomography mode.
After the continuation of his research at AXES as a postdoctoral researcher until June 2015, during which he developed the distributed software "Rinzler" for the control of custom made X-ray and IR imaging instrumentation, he became a postdoctoral researcher at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France. In addition to fluorescence and diffraction, he is involved in improving the use of full-field absorption spectroscopy for colored X-ray imaging. 

dr. Giuliana Gatto Rotondo (Italy)

dr. Hamidi-Asl Ezat (Iran)

Dr. Ezat Hamidi-Asl was a postdoct in the AXES research group from June 2013 till Feb 2016. During her research at the UA, she developed a synthesis of different nanomaterials with diverse nanostructures and their application as a platform for the immobilization of aptamers. Now, she is a research assistant at the university of Mazandaran.

dr. Hrdlickova Kuckova Stepanka (Poland)

Kevin Hellemans (Belgium)

dr. Benjamin Horemans (Belgium) was a PhD student in our group for several years and defended his PhD in February 2012. Benjamin contributed to the chemical characterization of particulate air pollutants and focused on some case studies on indoor air quality, cultural heritage and the marine environment. Nowadays, Benjamin is working at ILVO.

dr. Harieth Kihampa (Tanzania) was a PhD student in our group for four years from 2009 and defended her PhD in May 2013. Her research focus was on characterization of surface waters and sediments for micro-contaminants. She particularly studied the Pangani river basin in her home country. Currently, Harieth is a Lecturer at the Open University of Tanzania.

dr. Velichka Kontozova - Deutsch (Bulgaria)

dr. Barbara Krupinska (Poland)

dr. Jeroen Lybaert (Belgium)

dr. Amiri Aref Mohaddeseh (Iran) joined our research group in June 2014 as a joint PhD program with the University of Mazandaran. She worked on the fabrication of an efficient biosensor for hydrogen peroxide based on the magnetic entrapment of hemoglobin at the surface of a screen-printed carbon electrode, through mixed hemi/ad-micelles array of positively charged surfactant supported iron oxide magnetic nanoparticles. During her PhD, Mohaddeseh developed the nanomaterial-based electrochemical sensors and biosensors for determination of some important biological and pharmaceutical compounds. She left the group in February 2015 and successfully defended her PhD dissertation in September 2015.

dr. Letizia Monico (Italy)

dr. Velibor Novaković (Serbia)

dr. Pilevar Sanaz (Iran) joined to AXES research group in 2011 as a PhD researcher. The main focus of her PhD studies was development of new strategies for electrochemical aptasensors for detection of environmentally important molecules. During her PhD, she worked on different topics such as water/air quality monitoring and electrocatalysis. She left the group in January 2017 after submitting her thesis to take a joint postdoc program at the University of California, Los Angeles and Stanford.

dr. Marie Radepont (France) was a PhD student in our group from October 2009 till March 2014. Her research contributed to the understanding of chemical reactions involved in a red pigment (cinnabar or vermilion) discoloration. She studied original altered works of art and artificially aged mercury sulfide samples by using different analytical techniques. These researches confirmed preliminary hypothesis on factors influencing the alteration of the pigment and explained the conditions in which these degradations occur in order to avoid them in the future. Marie is currently working in Paris as a chemistry and human sciences teacher for students in medicine school.

dr. Elias Ranjbari (Iran) joined to our research group in June 2014 as a joint PhD program with the University of Mazandaran. He worked on removal and preconcentration of trace amounts of Rhodamine dyes in environmental and waste water samples using magnetic nanoparticles. During his PhD Elias developed the sample preparation methods for the determination of some organic and pharmaceutical compounds by HPLC in environmental and biological samples. He left the group in February 2015 and successfully defended his PhD dissertation in August 2015.

dr. Daniellys Alejo Sanchez (Cuba)

dr. Veerle Van der Linden (Belgium)

em. prof. dr. René Van Grieken (Belgium) was co-founder of the centre of Micro- and Trace Analysis (MiTAC) and the former head of the research group Environmental Analysis till October 2010. His research was situated in the fundamental and methodological research related to micro- and trace analysis with applications in environmental, cultural heritage conservation and material science. Main topics: the atmospheric deposition of nutrients and heavy metals to the North Sea, aerosols in remote areas, the damage to historical buildings and medieval glass windows by sea salt and by air pollution, aerosols in museums and important churches, the relation of aerosol concentrations and health problems, ...He is (co-)author of about 600 articles in international scientific journals, about 210 contributions to conference proceedings and book chapters, and ca 15 books.

dr. Katleen Van Meel (Belgium) was a PhD-student in our group from November 2004 till March 2009. After the successful defense of her PhD thesis in 2009, she continued to work in our group as a post-doc till August 2012. Her specialty was the development of new methods for XRF. She worked on different topics such as environmental samples (aerosols, sediments, heavy metals, etc.) and industrial samples containing precious metals. She currently works for Antea Group Belgium as an advisor.

dr. Bart Vekemans (Belgium)

prof. dr. Laszlo Vincze

dr. Anna Worobiec (Poland)