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Leendert Vergeynst

PhD, Assistant Professor

Leendert Vergeynst

Research group Microbial technologies for clean water

Research interest

Engineering biochemical processes for water treatment is my main research interest. I investigate interactions  between organisms and pollutants and develop advanced biotechnologies to combat environmental pollution. 

My current research focusses on:

  • Advanced water treatment technologies for removal of micropollutants.
  • Effect-directed bioanalytical technologies to bridge the gap between biological and chemical water quality assessment. 
  • Microbial technologies for recovery of carbon and energy from wastewater
  • Oil spill biodegradation in Arctic marine environments (seawater, sea ice, sediment) by means of both laboratory and field experiments (focus on Greenland). 

Areas of expertise

  • Analytical organic chemistry - screening - chemometrics
    I am expert in chromatographic and mass spectrometric techniques. I developed LC-MS based chemometric techniques to screen and quantify micropollutants in water and advanced GC-MS-based oil-fingerprinting techniques to investigate oil degradation processes.
  • Environmental fate of organic pollutants
    I study the fate of pollutants including micropollutants such as pharmaceuticals and oil residues in drinking water, terrestrial aquatic environments, wastewater treatment and in marine environments
  • Environmental microbiology
    Using molecular biology techniques (high-throughput sequencing) and bioinformatics, I investigate microbial-oil interactions and oil bioremediation processes.
  • Multivariate statistics
    I apply and improve multivariate statistics for data mining and to reach a thorough understanding of complex processes

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