My hope is to contribute a small bit to the solution of the big challenges

Maik Budde is currently Doctoral Candidate at the Plasma and Materials Processing group in the Applied Physics Department of Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) as fellow of the ITN PIONEER within the EU framework program for research and innovation Horizon 2020. Striving for innovative solutions to climate change, the capture and utilization of CO₂ by means of plasma-catalysis is a research field of rapidly growing interest. In his work he investigates methods to vibrationally excite CO₂ with plasma by using laser-based diagnostics. It is this vibrational excitation that turns out to be crucial for energy-efficient dissociation of carbon dioxide.

Maik Budde obtained his BSc and MSc in Physics at the Experimental Plasma Physics group in the Physics and Astronomy Department of Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany. In his work he emulated the plasma treatment of surfaces by means of particle beams. This way he was able to isolate the influence of specific species, contained in the particle cocktail called plasma, on polymer or metal surfaces.