News

Richard van de Sanden and Thom Palstra will become members of the NWO Domain Applied and Engineering Sciences (AES) board. The NWO Executive Board ratified their nomination on Wednesday 9 June. Van de Sanden is appointed with effect from 1 August and Palstra with effect from 1 September.

We have free sunlight every day, but still we dig in the ground for oil and gas to provide us with energy. That has always intrigued Anja Bieberle-Hütter. As interim head of DIFFER’s solar fuels research theme, she is determined to help solving the paradox.

Egbert Westerhof started out at DIFFER in 1983 as a PhD student. He saw the institute evolve from an exclusively fusion-focused ‘family’ inhabiting a medieval castle to a more business-like community committed to fundamental energy research and situated on a modern university campus. As interim head of fusion research, Westerhof is now preparing the next round of evolutions.

Artur Perek built the MANTIS camera, rewrote the software, and contributed to solving the difficult problem of divertor detachment: cooling plasma before it hits the tokamak wall. Perek loved every inch of his PhD.

ORACLE is a new global collaboration to examine new ways of producing green ammonia. The project has received EUR 2,8 million from the EU framework program for research and innovation, Horizon 2020. DIFFER is one of the partners of the project, headed by Aarhus University in Denmark. The program will run for three years, the kick-off was on 25 May 2021.