Veronique Van Speybroeck - KINPOR

Onderstaande beschrijving is in het Engels:

Veronique Van Speybroeck graduated as civil engineer in physics at the Ghent University in 1997 and received her Ph.D in 2001 at the same university on a subject dealing with theoretical simulations of chemical reactions with static and dynamical approaches. She was co-founder in 1997 of the Center for Molecular Modeling (CMM – molmod.ugent.be) which is currently composed of about 30 researchers. In this Center, she is leading the “Computational Molecular Modeling” division. After her PhD she received a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Fund for Scientific Research Flanders and had the possibility to travel to various foreign institutes for short periods.
Currently she has a permanent position at the Ghent University, within the Faculty of Engineering, as Research Professor.
She is author or co-author of more than 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals, 60 conference papers and has given several lectures at international conferences. She has a strong international network and is involved in several projects with industrial partners. She is also teaching several courses belonging to the study programs of the Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Science.
Her current research interests primarily comprise study of the kinetics of chemical reactions with state of the art molecular modeling techniques. The applications of interest are situated in petrochemistry, catalysis and polymers. Very recently she received an ERC starting grant (Call ERC-2009-StG) on a subject on first principle chemical kinetics in nanoporous materials (KINPOR). With this ERC grant Veronique Van Speybroeck works with a team of researchers on accurate prediction of chemical kinetics of catalytic reactions taking place in nanoporous materials from first principles.

Contact: Veronique.VanSpeybroeck@UGent.be

Publications: https://biblio.ugent.be/person/801001153549

First principle chemical kinetics in nanoporous materials (KINPOR)

The aim of this ERC starting grant is to determine the chemical reaction kinetics in nanoporous materials.  These materials have properties that can be tailored at the nanometer scale – approximately 10000 smaller than a human hair – and have the potential to play a crucial role in new technologies such as energy storage, energy conversion, sustainable chemistry.  Computer simulations have become indispensable in the design of these materials as they can offer a virtual microscope for chemical conversions that take place in the pores of the nanomaterials.  
Molecular modeling and in particular the study of chemical conversions in these materials can serve as a tool to design new materials and thus to obtain molecular control over any production process.  The research will be focused on two types of nanoporous materials : zeotype materials and metal organic frameworks.  The latter materials have the highest surface areas and the lowest densities known to date, making them useful in clean energy technologies such as hydrogen storage, methane storage, and carbon dioxide capture.  Their usage in energy conversions is relatively unexplored to date and is one of the topics that will be explored in within the framework of the ERC starting grant.