Biography
Piet Iedema studied Chemistry in Groningen and got his PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 1984 from the Delft University of Technology; title of PhD thesis: “The LiBr/ZnBr2/CH3OH Absorption Heat Pump for Domestic Heating”. He has worked in industry (Stork and DSM) in Chemical Engineering departments heading mathematical modeling groups. From 1987-1994 he was Group Leader ‘Process Integration’ and Department Head ‘Modelling & Mathematics’ at DSM Research. In 1994 he was appointed Full Professor of Chemistry at the UvA. Presently he holds the Chair Computational Polymer Chemistry and Science for at the Van ‘t Hoff Institute of Molecular Science (HIMS)/UvA.
Research interests
Prof. Iedema has concentrated on modelling in the polymer reaction engineering area (PRE). His interest is fundamental understanding of chemical and physical processes in a wide range of polymer systems, from oil paint layers to industrially produced compounds, covering polymerization and long-term degradation of old oil paintings a serious Cultural Heritage issue. His focus is on predicting the microstructure of both finite polymers and their distributive properties (size distribution and branching topology) and polymer networks. Mostly, a macroscopic perspective is taken accounting for chemical kinetics and transport phenomena. A considerable part of his research activities have been funded, directly or indirectly, by industry: DSM and Sabic (Geleen, NL), BASF (Ludwigshafen, D), Océ-van der Grinten (Canon, Venlo, NL) and by the Dutch Polymer Institute. He is active as a consultant for Sabic, DSM, BASF, Dow Chemicals, Océ-van der Grinten. He has (co-)authored around 150 papers, in Angewandte Chemie, Scientific Reports, Macromolecules, Polymer, Soft matter, Chemical Engineering Science. In 2006 he became involved in setting up the Science part of the newly erected Master and Minor studies of Restoration and Conservation at the UvA. He started the research activities in oil paint at HIMS acquiring funds from NWO Science4Arts with the PAinT project (Paint Alterations in Time, 650 k€), one of the first mechanistic studies of metals soaps in oil paintings, of which he was the Project Leader. He started introducing his modelling expertise into the art field in the PREDAGIO (PREDicting AGIng of Oil networks, 450 k€), also in the role of Project Leader.