As of 1 November, the Executive Board has appointed Professor Jos Keurentjes as programme director Energy Innovation. The appointment, a new position with a focus on energy transition, is for a four-year term.
Since 2014, Keurentjes has been Chief Scientific Officer and member of the Executive Board of TNO. At TNO, he was responsible for the collaboration between science, industry and government, primarily in the form of large-scale Joint Innovation Centres. He also liaised intensively with international industry and was active in the field of government. Before joining TNO, Jos Keurentjes worked at AkzoNobel, where his roles included Corporate Director of Technology and Open Innovation and Executive Vice President of AkzoNobel Industrial Chemicals.
Since 1997, Keurentjes has occupied the chair in ‘Process and Equipment Design’ at Eindhoven University of Technology. A position he held full-time for ten years before switching to part-time. His research has focused on the development of sustainable concepts for the process industry, using key enabling technologies, such as membrane technology, supercritical fluids, surface-active systems and ultrasonic technology. The biomedical activities within the chair led in 2004 to the establishment of a start-up (Ventinova) focusing on the development of smart devices for medical airway management. Also CarbonOro (2013) emerged as a start-up in the cleantech domain with focus on smart carbon dioxide capture.
Jos Keurentjes is also active in various ancillary positions and is closely involved in the government's Top Sectors programmes for Chemistry, Energy, High Tech Systems and Materials (HTSM) and Bio-based Economy (BBE). In addition, he has been chair of the Board of Directors for Ventinova since 2015 and for Photanol since 2018. He also chairs the national transition agenda on Circular Economy plastics, is a member of the committee of independent experts at the Netherlands Institute for Sustainable Packaging (KIDV) and chair of the National Chemical Recycling Platform. He is also a member of the Dutch National Research Agenda steering committee.
New position focusing on energy transition
The role of Energy Innovation programme director is a new position at the University of Twente, integrated within the Strategic Business Development (SBD) programme. Sustainability is a key cornerstone in the University of Twente’s new mission, vision and strategy: Shaping2030. The energy transition is one of the core activities on which UT will be focusing in this context. New technologies are essential for supplying society with energy in a sustainable way. There is already a great deal of expertise in this field at UT. The UT research expertise that will prove useful in facing this social challenge focuses primarily on reducing emissions, digitizing energy systems, batteries and storage and hydrogen systems.
The Energy Innovation programme director will concentrate on establishing and coordinating programmes for these research areas in order to contribute to the energy transition. For this purpose, UT expertise will be combined with that of external partners, such as companies with expertise in energy conversion and transport, knowledge institutions and the public sector. One of the key ambitions will be to continue collaboration with Münster in the field of batteries.
