K.W.J. Zijderveld MSc (Kim)

As a child, I used to play around a lot with trying to get the liquid out of berries to try and create paints. This playing around with mixing natural products should have made it clear that I was a chemist all along, always innovating on interesting questions. Skipping to the present day where I apply my problem solving mindset towards designing sustainable chemical solutions – innovating to a better future. In understanding the behavior of chemicals, we can learn to rationally design new and more sustainable options for societal problems bit by bit, molecule by molecule. Of course, it is also vital that these solutions are open, understandable and accessible to this same society, allowing everyone to help in solving tomorrow's problems today. Similar to me finding some great paints way back when, I now study and teach useful chemistry to achieve that goal.

This stable approach towards practical chemistry stems mainly from my Bachelor's degree in Applied Science, done at the HU in Amsterdam. During this period, I learned all there is to know about organic chemistry as well as discovered my foundations as a scientist. As part of the degree, I did an internship at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow at the Pure and Applied Chemistry group of Duncan Graham, as well as at Shell, both for half a year. These experiences helped me in shaping a clear picture of what I could achieve with my degree. During my Master's, I adored being part of the group of M. Bickelhaupt where under the guidance of Thomas Hansen I worked on explaining chemical reactivity by using Amsterdam Density Functional.

Nowadays, I am fortunate to be able to do a PhD at the Sustainable Process Technology (SPT) and Photocatalytic Synthesis (PCS) groups at the University of Twente in Enschede, wherein I face the challenge to build-up and work out a complex sustainable circular downstream process. This project is part of the ReCoVR consortium who aims to develop novel sustainable technologies in order to recover valuable resources from residue streams. Within this consortium, my work focusses on target 3: "Sugar, Salt and Carboxylic acid", utilizing extraction and electrochemial recovery of the solvent to create a circular process. This project is supervised by Prof. Boelo Schuur, Prof. Guido Mul and Prof. Bastiaan Mei

LINK TO RECOVR:

https://ispt.eu/projects/recovr/

WORK EXPERIENCE:

Jan 2021- Sep 2021 internship VU Amsterdam

Understanding the competition between SN2 and E2 in cyclic systems. Under Supervision of Dr. Thomas Hansen and Dr. Trevor A. Hamlin.

Jan 2019- Jul 2019 internship Shell

Sep 2017-Jan 2018 Internship at University of Strathclyde

Done research for: 'Project Cell Death' nanostars for cancer therapy measured by Raman spectroscopy.