The Belgian Industrial Research and Development Board (BiR&D) attaches great importance to industrial valorisation and societal relevance. The yearly BiR&D Multi-Disciplinary PhD Thesis Award is granted in recognition of a PhD thesis that presents an original and multidisciplinary contribution with potential industrial valorisation and societal relevance.

James Campbell is joining our group having undertaken a year of post-doctoral research funded by the Dean of Engineering Prize at the University of Nottingham. While at Nottingham James’s research focused on the fabrication of gas separation membranes composed of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) as part of Dr Begum Tokay’s research Group. James obtained his PhD at Imperial College London, under the supervision of Prof. Andrew Livingston, researching the fabrication of hybrid polymer/MOF membranes for OSN applications. James was recently awarded the 2016 annual award for the best journal paper on Membrane Science and Engineering from the European Membrane Society for his paper entitled for his paper "Fabrication of hybrid polymer/metal organic framework membranes: mixed matrix membranes versus in situ growth" published in Journal of Materials Chemistry A. In our group James will focus on the fabrication of ultra-thin MOF membranes fabricated via a MOF-CVD process for gas separations. Welcome James !

Timothée’s ChemSusChem paper demonstrates how the superior adsorptive properties of porous and crystalline metal-organic framework (MOFs) offer novel and sustainable alternatives for the recovery of biobased fermentative products. This paper resulted from a collaboration with the De Vos group, Stock group (CAU, DE) Bein group (LMU, DE).

Many thanks to the European Research Council for awarding Rob's starting grant project VAPORE!

In this paper we try to highlight the underlying concepts of vapor phase growth of MOFs and which exciting perspectives this MOF-CVD approach opens.

BBC show The Naked Scientists highlights the work on MOF-based sensors in a radio interview with Rob.

Our work on MOF-based sensors for the detection of nerve agents sparked a lot of interest, from within the academic community but as well from the broader public and some companies! In the future we will build on this work to develop sensors for (1) indoor air quality monitoring, (2) medical diagnosis based on breath analysis and (3) monitoring the evolution of complex aromas (e.g. ripening of fruit, detecting the freshness of meat, etc.)

Ivo's paper on the detection of nerve agents with MOFs has been published in Chemical Science. Congrats! In this work it is show how non-conductive MOFs such as UiO-type frameworks can be used for the ppb-level detection of toxic organic compounds. In the future we will combine this approach with our patented MOF-CVD concept to enable the scalable production of highly sensitive and miniaturized sensors.

Ivo was awarded his PhD after successfully completing the public defense of his thesis: "Synthesis of immobilized metal-organic frameworks for integrated applications

Joris' review on the use and production of ionic liquids has been published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. This paper resulted from a collaboration with the De Vos group and the Binnemans group.