As a design engineer and academic researcher I work at the intersection of industrial ecology, digital fabrication and data-driven systems design. In my work, I focus on the circular economy, addressing both biological and technical product cycles.
Solar energy materials
My most recent graduate thesis research (2024) at MIT is at the intersection of renewable energy and materials circularity—with a specific focus on solar energy. Through a Material Flow Analysis, future waste flows from discarded solar photovoltaic (PV) panels are predicted up until the year 2100.
Building integrated photovoltaics
This was inspired by earlier work, when I published a design manual on the integration of solar photovoltaic technology in historic built environments.
Material Flow Analysis
To gain more insight in performance, I use code to make data visualizations of material flows. This is an example for the nickel industry, where pathways to battery-grade nickel are presented, from mining to processing and refining.
Rooted in a background in structural engineering and design, my portfolio spans various scales and disciplines.
Structural Design
PerfoStruct, a method for designing lightweight engineered wood structures based on a planar material perforation strategy that uses topology optimization and quadtree subdivision, gained recognition and was awarded the GSD Peter Rice Prize for Excellence in Structural Design. This was a team effort with Peter Osborne and Spyridon Ampanavos.
Earthquake engineering research
For my undergraduate research (2015), I worked on earthquake-resistant building structures. This study showed that the method of reinforcing masonry walls with fibre-reinforced composite in the seismic region of Groningen has not yet been sufficiently investigated from a system, societal, technical and service level.
Bio-based materials development
In my independent design engineering project at Harvard, I developed upcycling pathways for an alginate-like wastewater material of a milk factory. Building materials in the classes of rubber, polymer, foam and ceramics were developed and tested.
I am fluent in digital fabrication techniques including CAD/CAM, additive manufacturing and CNC machining.
Digital fabrication
Fab Academy is an intense 10-week digital fabrication course, founded by a group at MIT. For the final project I made Airable, a bio-based wearable for monitoring indoor air quality and coronavirus exposure risk.
Additive Manufacturing with Oyster Shells
At Haystack Labs 2023, the “Biomaterials: OysterClay” project utilized local oyster shell waste from Maine to introduce innovative ceramic-making techniques. After cleaning the shells, they are ground with a specialized tool, refined to a consistent granularity, and prepared for 3D printing on a WASP clay printer. While the clay 3D printing experiments revealed non-Newtonian behavior resembling plaster-like materials, it presents promising directions for environmentally-conscious fabrication workflows.
More project will be added as I am currently updating this portfolio. Some of the projects below are still in Dutch.