• Prof. dr. Tom Breugelmans

Tom Breugelmans started his career as an assistant in 2004 at Artesis Hogeschool Antwerp and obtained a PhD in engineering science from VUB in 2010 on electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. He is currently a full professor at the University of Antwerp. he is spokesperson of the research group ELCAT (Applied Electrochemistry and Catalysis), which he founded in 2013 and has since grown and currently employs about 40 people. Since September 2020, he assumes the mandate of dean of the Faculty of Applied Engineering. Tom is an internationally recognized expert in electrochemical reactor engineering suitable for industrial applications. he is determined to electrify the industry in a green and sustainable way to ultimately leave behind traditional, typically polluting, chemical processes. The main interests of Tom on which his research focuses are related to the development in the field of industrial electrification. At the moment, he is recognized in the field of electrochemistry mainly in the areas of CO2 electroreduction and water splitting evolution. In 2023, he was awarded an ERC consolidator Grant to continue his work on CO2 electrolysis with as aim to revolutionize the reactor design by building it up from scratch.


  • Prof. dr. Marc Koper

Marc Koper is Professor of Surface Chemistry and Catalysis at Leiden University, The Netherlands. He received his PhD degree (1994) from Utrecht University (The Netherlands) with a thesis on nonlinear dynamics and oscillations in electrochemistry. He was an EU Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at the University of Ulm (Germany) and a Fellow of Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) at Eindhoven University of Technology, before moving to Leiden University in 2005. His research in Leiden focuses on fundamental aspects of electrocatalysis, theoretical and computational electrochemistry, and electrochemical surface science, in relation to renewable energy and chemistry. He has received various national and international awards, among which the Spinoza Prize of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (2021), the Allen J. Bard Award for Electrochemical Science of The Electrochemical Society (2020), the Netherlands Catalysis and Chemistry Award (2019), and the Faraday Medal (2017) from the Royal Society of Chemistry. He was President of the International Society of Electrochemistry in 2021-2022.


  • Prof. dr. ir. Annick Hubin

Annick Hubin holds a PhD in Chemical and Materials Engineering obtained at Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 1989. She is a full professor at the Faculty of Engineering of VUB with a chair in Electrochemical Engineering, and is head of the research group SUME 'Sustainable Materials Engineering' in the department MACH 'Materials and Chemistry'. The mission of SUME is to create and discover novel sustainable (hybrid) materials by purposefully selecting their composition and steering the physicochemical processes involved in their formation. The group counts around 70 people with more than 10 different nationalities. She is mainly teaching in Bruface, the Brussels Faculty of Engineering, a joint initiative of VUB and Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), offering masters in different engineering disciplines in English. Her research is looking at the applications of electrochemical engineering in fields such as corrosion, electrocatalysis, batteries and fuel cells, sensors, and nano materials based on advanced characterization and predictive modelling. The focus is on the in-situ combined electrochemical and spectroscopic characterization of the solid-liquid and solid-solid interfacial behavior from the macroscopic to the nanometer scale. The in-house developed technique of Odd Random Phase Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (ORP-EIS) takes a key position in the characterization, and allows for operando studies of electrochemical systems.


  • Dr. Ward van der Stam

Dr. Ward van der Stam is an assistant professor at Utrecht University, where his main focus lies on in-situ characterization of electrocatalysts under reaction conditions. He obtained his PhD degree in 2016, and the PhD research focused on the development of colloidal synthesis strategies toward well-defined nanoparticles of various compositions, with a strong emphasis on the use of earth-abundant materials, like copper. Furthermore, he acquired expertise regarding self-assembly of nanoparticles, the development of cation exchange and doping reactions, and in-situ X-ray techniques. Thereafter, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Delft University of Technology, where he worked with in-situ (spectro)electrochemical methods and ultrafast spectroscopy techniques to eludicate the influence of electrochemical doping on the structural and optical properties of colloidal nanomaterials. Currently, his research at Utrecht University combines the acquired expertise in colloidal nanoparticle synthesis strategies, electrochemistry and in-situ spectroscopy (e.g. Raman spectroscopy) and X-ray techniques (e.g. X-ray diffraction and absorption) to access and understand novel reaction pathways in the electrocatalytic conversion of CO2 into value-added chemicals and fuels. Furthermore, he likes to share his passion for sustainability research and what chemistry can do to mitigate CO2 emissions with the next generation of scientist through knowledge dissemination events and teaching.  


  • Prof. dr. Sotiris Sotiropoulos

Dr Sotiris Sotiropoulos has more than 25 years experience in electrochemistry. He received his BSc in Chemistry (Aristotle University) in 1989 and his PhD in Electrochemistry (Southampton University) in 1994. Following postdoctoral periods in Cambridge, UK and Johns Hopkins, US, he was appointed a Lecturer in Nottingham University, UK (1996-2000) and from 2000 he moved to Aristotle University, Greece, where he is now a Professor of Electrochemistry. He is the author/co-author of more than 100 refereed journal publications that have received more than 3500 citations (h-index=34). He has supervised/co-supervised 18 (9/9) PhD theses in the UK and Greece. He has participated or directed 20 Greek, UK and International Research Projects. His current research interests (within the general area of physical electrochemistry) include: preparation and characterization of electrocatalysts and photo-elelectrocatalysts; electrocatalysis (for fuel cell-related reactions and hydrogen production); photoelectrocatalysis for environmental applications; microelectrodes; sensor materials and designs; scanning probe microscopies (AFM. SECM). He has served as an Editor for Electrochimica Acta (Elsevier; 2021 IF: 6.9) where he is currently a Special Issues Editor.


  • Prof. dr. Anthony Kucernak

Prof. Anthony Kucernak (ARK) B.Sc., Ph.D,. CChem. MRSC, is a professor of  Physical Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London, and has extensive experience in the study of various aspects of solid polymer electrolyte fuel cells, supercapacitors, and the design of new electrochemical techniques. His group currently studies a large number of aspects of fuel cell systems ranging from the development of new electrocatalysts, the development of new techniques to characterise and study electrocatalysts, the development of fuel cell electrodes, and the development of new methods to characterise fuel cells.


  • Prof. dr. Tom Burdyny

Thomas Burdyny has a mechanical engineering education in the form of a BEng and MASc from the University of Victoria in Canada. He moved to the University of Toronto for his PhD thesis in photocatalytic and electrocatalytic conversion of CO2 (under Prof. David Sinton), before beginning a postdoctoral fellow at TU Delft in 2018. In 2019 he opened his research group as an Assistant Professor working to advance the performance and scalability of electrochemical technologies. The research mixture of the group is broad and ranges from operando techniques, catalyst development, electrochemical engineering, and transport analysis of electrochemical systems. In 2023 he was promoted to Associate Professor and awarded an ERC Starting Grant to continue his work in CO2 Electrolysis.


  • Dr. Balázs Endrődi

Balázs Endrődi is an assistant professor at the University of Szeged (SZTE), Hungary, Department of Physical Chemistry and Materials Science. He obtained his PhD from the University of Szeged in 2015. As a postdoctoral fellow he spent 2.5 years in Stockholm, Sweden, working at KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology. During this time, he was involved in an industrial collaboration with AkzoNobel, aiming to increase the energy efficiency and sustainability of electrolytic chlorate production. Returning to his Alma Mater, his focus turned to the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide and to the development of electrolyzer cells and systems. Currently he is involved in many applied electrochemical projects, with goals ranging from paired electrolysis processes to technology scale-up. He is also dedicated to education, teaching general and physical chemistry related subjects, and training students in electrochemistry.


  • Dr. Jürgen Kintrup

Jürgen Kintrup is senior Technology Expert HCl Electrolysis at Covestro Deutschland AG, Leverkusen (Germany). He received his PhD in Physical Chemistry in the field of metal hydrogen systems at the University of Münster (Germany). Since 1999 he is working for Bayer, Bayer Material Science and now Covestro in R&D in the fields of heterogeneous catalysis, electrocatalysis, electrode and electrochemical process development. His key knowledge is in the field of chlorine manufacturing as well as the production and use of gas diffusion electrodes for reduction of oxygen and carbon dioxide. In his past work Jürgen was part of several industry cooperations, research alliances and project teams which have established industrial electrolysis for saving chlorine production using oxygen depolarized cathode (ODC) technology. He is devoted to the development of sustainable electrochemical processes from laboratory to industrial scale and is passionate to share his knowledge and experience with young scientists.


  • Dr. Nick Valckx

Nick Valckx is the business manager for Zirfon hydrogen membranes at Agfa. He obtained his PhD on semiconductor electrochemistry at imec in 2010. He has spent 6 years working for Kaneka corporation on scaling up wet chemistries in Japan for the production of Heterojunction solar cells. In 2016 he joined Agfa where he started his career as research manager on functional coating on PET film and later to Zirfon membrane technology. These membranes are used at the core of alkaline water electrolyzers to produce green hydrogen for industrial processes, energy storage, fuel, heating, or ammonia production. Zirfon is poised to play a pivotal role in making large-scale green hydrogen production economically viable, leading to a reduction in global CO2 emissions in the future.