Lab Principal Investigator
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Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Delft University of Technology. Tom currently leads the Burdyny Energy Lab (est. July 2019). He has a BEng and MSc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Victoria. During his PhD at the University of Toronto (2013-17), he investigated catalyst-system interactions and mass transport in CO2 electrolyzers.
Notable personal grants include an NWO Veni Grant (2019), ERC Starting Grant (2023) and NWO Vidi Grant (2025). Awards include the Best Lecturer of TU Delft (2021) and H.I. Waterman Sustainability Award (2023). The group has also been collaborators in EU H2020 project SELECTCO2, the NWO OTP project eHEAT, and NWA project FlexEChem. Dr. Burdyny's full CV is available here (updated November 2025) |
Current PhD Students
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Jesse KokJesse completed his bachelor Molecular Science and Technology in 2020 and his Master of Chemical Engineering in 2022 from the TU Delft. His master thesis was conducted at MECS under supervision of Siddhartha Subramanian and Dr. Tom Burdyny. Here, he studied the influence of reactant residence time on C2 product formation in MEA-cells. After experiencing great interest in the field of the electrochemical reduction of CO2, he was offered a PhD position in the same group. His research focus is on the intermittent operation of CO2 electrolysers as a part of the FlexEChem project.
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Henri earned his B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering and his M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering at the RWTH Aachen University in 2021 and 2023 respectively. His research within the Bachelor’s and Master’s focused on electrochemical hydrogen compression and purification under Prof. Matthias Wessling at the AVT institute in Aachen. Additionally, he spent his Bachelor’s junior year at the University of California in Davis and wrote his master thesis at the University of Cambridge under supervision of Prof. Alexei Lapkin. In December 2023, he joined the Tom Burdyny Energy Lab at the TU Delft as PhD candidate. His current research focuses on heat management within CO2 electrolyzer cells.
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Gerard completed his BSc in Chemical Engineering at the Institut Químic de Sarrià (IQS) in Barcelona (2017-2021). After these four years, he decided to explore new fields and moved to the Netherlands, where he obtained a MSc in Chemical Engineering from TUDelft (2021-2023). For his MSc thesis, he focused on utilizing suspended electrodes to address current mass transfer limitations in liquid-fed CO2 electrolysers.
He then delved into the industry, undertaking an internship where he modelled the ionic transport of an industrial acid-base flow battery. In December 2023, he commenced his journey at the Burdyny Energy Lab, embarking on a PhD project dedicated to designing Iridium-Free Stable CO2 electrolysers. |
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Elena AntonionoElena earned both her BSc and MSc degrees in Chemical and Sustainable Processes Engineering from Polytechnic of Turin, Italy, in 2021 and 2023 respectively. Her MSc thesis focused on the use and synthesis of biocatalysts for sensing application. Additionally, in 2020, as part of her Master program, she spent one semester at the Energy and Environmental Engineering department of the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (INSA) in Lyon, France.
In March 2024, Elena moved to the Netherlands to join the MECS group of TU Delft as a PhD candidate. Here, her research is dedicated to the use of molecular catalysts in CO2 reduction. |
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Huy Tu HoangTu completed his BSc in Chemistry at the University of Science and Technology of Hanoi (USTH) in Vietnam (2019-2022). Thanks to the Erasmus Mundus Scholarship, he started his new journey in Europe with the Surface-Electro-Radiation-Photochemistry (SERP+) MSc program (2022-2024) at the University of Paris-Saclay (France) and the University of Genova (Italy). His MSc thesis, conducted at Synchrotron SOLEIL in France, focused on the electrochemical and spectro-electrochemical characterization of iron macrocycle complexes and their reduced species under CO2 reduction conditions.
In December 2024, Tu joined the Burdyny Energy Lab at TU Delft as a PhD candidate, continuing his journey in the new European country – the Netherlands. His research focus is on Molecular catalysis for CO2 conversion. |
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Lukas ArcuriLukas completed both his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering at the Technical University of Munich in 2022 and 2025 respectively. Additionally, he spent a semester abroad during his M.Sc. as a Visiting Student in the research group of Prof. Michael S. Strano at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He conducted his MSc thesis at the direct air capture company Phlair in Germany, where he led the planning and execution of an acid-base electrolyzer test rig. In January 2026, he moved to the Netherlands and joined the Burdyny Energy Lab at TU Delft as PhD candidate. His research is part of a collaboration with TNO Rijswijk and focuses on scale-up of CO2 electrolyzers.
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Iris BlommesteinIris completed both her BSc and MSc degrees in Chemical Engineering at the TU Delft in 2023 and 2025, respectively. Her master's thesis focused on the minimisation of catalyst loading in the PEM cell using atomic layer deposition under the supervision of Prof. Ruud van Ommen. For the final part of her master's degree, she did an internship at dsm-firmenich in Australia, working on the automation of the fermentation process. In June 2026, she started a PhD at the Burdyny Energy Lab, researching the stabilisation of the copper electrodes in CO/CO₂ electrolysis.
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Affiliated Postdoctoral Researchers
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Dr. Yan Vogel
After undergraduate studies in Spain in Chemistry and Electrochemistry, I moved to Australia and completed my PhD in 2020. Next, I obtained a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Swiss Foundation that I carried at TU Delft (2021-2024) and ETH Zurich (2024-2025). I currently hold a Veni grant from NWO here at TU Delft and I collaborate with the Burdyny Energy Lab. My research develops electrocatalytic routes to replace current fossil fuel manufacturing routes, and builds more sustainable optoelectronic technologies. I use a combination of in-situ spectroscopy, electrochemical methods, and nanomaterial synthesis to develop electrocatalytic and optoelectronic technologies.
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Alumni
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PhD Students
Dr. Kailun Yang Dr. Kai Liu Dr. Mark Sassenburg Dr. Siddhartha Subramanian Dr. Hugo Pieter Iglesias van Montfort Postdocs Dr. Erdem Irtem Prof. Mengran Li Prof. Maryam Abdinejad Dr. Jasper Biemolt Dr. Nikita Kolobov Dr. Lorenz Baumgartner Visiting PhD Students Dr. Tiange Yuan (2023) Lydia Wesseler (2025) Laura Gatti (2025/26) |
(PhD 2017 - 2022, now at Metrohm) (PhD 2017 - 2022, now at Chongqing Jiaotong University) (PhD 2018 - 2023, now at TNO) (PhD 2020 - 2024, now PD at Eindhoven University of Technology) (PhD 2020 - 2024, now at the European Patent Office) (Postdoc 2020 - 2022, now at VS Particles) (Postdoc 2021 - 2022, now an Assistant Prof. at University of Melbourne) (Postdoc 2021 - 2023, now an Assistant Prof. at DTU) (Postdoc 2022 - 2024, now R&D Manager at HydroFlexx) (Postdoc 2023 - 2025, now PD at Eindhoven University of Technology) (Postdoc 2024 - 2025, now at ionysis) |