Rik van Gorp started his PhD at Eindhoven University in June 2024. His research focuses on the design and optimization of advanced alkaline water electrolysis to contribute to the deployment of cheap green hydrogen at scale.

Hydrogen, a potential key player in decarbonizing sectors like steel production, ammonia production, maritime transport, synfuel production, and long-duration energy storage, faces deployment challenges due to high capital costs and moderate energy efficiency of existing water electrolysis technologies. Rik’s PhD work aims to address these issues by designing advanced alkaline cell and electrode concepts that enhance power density and efficiency.

Prior to his PhD, Rik co-founded Heratec, a spin-off focused on commercializing sustainable electrodes for next-generation electrochemical devices. Although building a spin-off company based on a single fuel cell component proved challenging, he extracted valuable learnings from the project that he aims to apply in his PhD traject.

Rik’s academic and entrepreneurial efforts have been recognized with several awards and grants, including a Faculty of Impact Fellowship position to further Heratec, a cum laude distinction for his MSc studies, the Teijin Innovation Challenge Grant, TTT Innovation Grant, and NWO Take-Off Grant.

Rik studied Chemical Engineering at the University of Groningen (BSc) and later at Eindhoven University of Technology (MSc). During his master, Rik has focused on the engineering of energy systems. In his master project Rik performed research on the computation bottom-up design of porous electrode microstructures. Afterwards, Rik moved to Aix-en-Provence to do an internship on tritium retention at the nuclear fusion facility ITER.