Michiel Van Tendeloo is a postdoctoral researcher at University of Antwerp, working with prof. Siegfried Vlaeminck. His skills cover advanced bioreactor design, monitoring biological processes, and pilot-scale reactor operation. Michiel will focus on the bioreactor development and operation, and will furthermore assist the other PhD and postdoc collaborators in solving their research questions. Michiel graduated as BSc in Bioscience Engineering at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) and MSc...

Thomas Corbett is a postdoc based at Uppsala University, where he is working with Anna Neubeck and Anna Rosling. Thomas will focus on enhancing the microbial weathering rates of silicate minerals. Thomas will also investigate the microbial mechanisms and processes, working with the reactor development team. Originally from New Zealand, he studied a BA/BSc (chemistry, political studies, and philosophy) and BSc Honours (chemistry) at The University of Auckland. Afterwards, he completed his...

RP 'Aldy' Poetra is a PhD student at University of Hamburg, in the Jens Hartmann research team at the Institute for Geology. Aldy will specifically focus on the growth of amorphous silica layers around the minerals, and how this affects the rate of mineral weathering. Aldy will also address the physico-chemistry of the weathering reactions, with specific focus on defining optimal physico-chemical conditions for the reactor development. Previously, Aldy studied his master’s degree in...

Grant Loescher will perform his BAM! PhD study hosted at the University of Hamburg, under the supervision of Jens Hartmann. He will focus on organic-inorganic interactions in weathering experiments, and how they affect the rate of weathering. It is expected that binding metal cations with organics will speed the overall rate of silicate dissolution. These processes will have implications for the weathering rate in both batch experiments and reactor experiments.  Grant has moved into Europe...

Iris Janssens is a PhD fellow at the IDlab research group of the University of Antwerp and IMEC, supervised by Tim Verdonck and Steven Latré. Iris will deal with the complex data challenges of BAM!, resulting from the wide range of combinations in the batch and reactor experiments. Iris will develop and implement an AI-based machine learning analysis. The aim is to rapidly identify which conditions favor weathering rates and carbon sequestration. The key is identifying causal relations,...

Tullia Calogiuri will be hosted at Wageningen University & Research, where she will work under the guidance of Jan Willem van Groenigen, Mathilde Hagens and Alix Vidal. Tullia will focus on the role of earthworms: under which conditions will they have the strongest stimulating effect on silicates weathering? On top, Tullia will investigate the potential of the bio-reactor end-product as a fertiliser and to enrich agri-soil carbon sequestration.  Originally from Italy, and with a passion...

Steven Mortier has been a PhD Researcher based in the IDLab research group, a cooperation between the University of Antwerp and IMEC, since October 2020. He is supervised by Tim Verdonck and Steven Latré. Together with Iris Janssens, Steven is responsible for the artificial intelligence part of the project. He will be working on both exploratory analysis as well as predictive models, with the ultimate goal of finding the set of parameters that maximizes reactor performance. For this...

Next weeks, we'll present all PhD fellows and postdocs working on BAM! We start with PhD fellow Guillermo Ledesma Dominguez, who will be hosted at University of Antwerp, with Siegfried Vlaeminck and Sara Vicca as main supervisors. Guillermo will be the ‘bridge’ between the batch experiments and the reactor design, ensuring proper translation of 'batch' outcomes into reactor test conditions. He thus has a crucial role in BAM! In his own experiments, he'll focus on important temporal changes...

We have a very diverse consortium, with machine learning specialists, biologists, chemists, reactor engineers and soil scientists all working together to tackle our research challenges. While we are preparing for the first experiments, we are also organising online crash courses, to take the whole consortium along in the basics (and the details) of the different scientific challenges, and the current state of relevant research. Jens Hartmann kicked-off with his crash course on geochemistry....

It was really productive and inspiring to finally meet with all BAM! project partners in Wageningen during our kick-off meeting (20-21 October 2021). After a short wrap-up of the project goals, a brief overview of the administrative aspects and encouraging words from our EIC project officer, we started off with a detailed discussion on the first steps to be taken in the conceptualization and design of our reactor experiment. We’re all on schedule for performing the first reactor experiments...