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Johan Padding (r) succeeds Ruud van Ommen (l)
as director of Pro2Tech (former DPTI) |
| Changes often go hand in hand. That is also the case at DPTI. Apart from a new name and a new term, the institute also has a new director since the beginning of this year. |
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| You were director of DPTI (now Pro2Tech) for the last three years. How do you look back on this period? |
Ruud van Ommen:
It was great to make the next steps with an enthusiastic group of people, after Andrzej Stankiewicz established it and led the institute for several years. I feel that working with the five research clusters was a good thing to do: it unites researchers from across the campus with a joint interest. Although COVID slowed down the brainstorms that should lead to new research proposals, I expect that the coming years several new projects will start as a result of cross-campus initiatives in our institute! |
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| You take over from Ruud, what is going to change? |
Johan Padding:
Ruud has done an excellent job leading the Institute, promoting a bottom-up approach in which research clusters develop their own ideas for research programmes. This is very much in line with my own leadership style. Our researchers are top-experts in their own respective fields, so it would be wrong to tell them what to do. Rather, our task is to motivate and help them work on larger collaborative research projects, increasing our chances to tackle the grand challenges of our time. |
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| What do you think are the grand challenges in the field of Process & Product Technology and what should be done about them? |
Ruud van Ommen:
I think the change from relatively simple bulk products to more advanced products will continue; hence it is good that we now also include “Product” in our name. Process technologists are indispensable when developing complex products such as novel pharmaceutics, semiconductor devices, etc. Also, I expect that in the coming time the focus will broaden from just defossilization – mostly looking at carbon – to circularity of other elements too.
Johan Padding:
We are currently tackling a lot of technological challenges to reduce our CO2 emissions, for instance by improving the energy efficiency of existing processes or by developing novel decarbonization technologies. However, in the long run, material circularity will become one of the most important challenges. We need to use, rather than consume, bulk and advanced products. Products must be engineered to allow for near 100% re-use or bio-degradability of materials, with economic feasibility. These requirements pose great challenges to process & product technology, in particular to separation processes for products consisting of different types of materials or products with trace amounts of rare elements. |
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| How do you see the appointment of Johan as your successor? |
Ruud van Ommen:
I think it will be a smooth transition. Johan was already very active in the management team of our institute, so he is very well up-to-date about ongoing issues. I am fully confident he will do great! |
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| What will change now we have a new captain at the helm? |
Johan Padding:
I hope not much will change! Ruud did an excellent job setting up a smooth running and relatively flat organization. To prepare our future researchers and engineers in the field of process and product technology, you may notice some additional focus on education. |
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