Advent calendar - December 5th - Gert ten Brink

In the Zernike Institute Advent Calendar, we are presenting 24 short spotlights in December. In these specials, we highlight PhD students, postdocs, support staff and technicians of our research groups and team - providing a glimpse in their typical day at work. In Episode 5 meet Gert ten Brink, research technician in the Nanostructured Materials and Interfaces group.

Just a normal day in the office for a technician in the Nanostructured Materials and Interfaces group.

After the big move from the old Nijenborgh 4 building things in the Feringa Building are slowly getting up to speed, starting at 9:00 sharp I welcome 10 new trainees who are eagerly waiting to be trained and become the new batch of skilled Scanning Electron Microscope Operators. These Microscope have been acquired due to a (very) generous donation by the Ubbo Emmius Foundation (UEF) for which I’m very thankfull. These new students start the training by receiving the basic principles in Electron Microscopy followed by a monkey see and monkey do process where it becomes clear that it’s not always as easy as it seems.

Luckily the state of the art microscopes from Thermo Fischer are as user friendly as can be, yet still very complicated. The next 3 days the training continues with lesser guidance each day after I will leave them alone but observe their progress after which they are granted permission to operate the SEM on their own, yet still keep a watchful eye on their progress in the coming months.

The next moment I need to order chemicals for groups members, install image analysis software on the TEM support computer and explain a post doc how to make a delicate cross sections from some chemical catalyst carrier and perform nanometer size EDX STEM analysis.

With over 30 years of experience, I received many requests to explain and elaborate on many different subjects from as many students, PhD’s, and post-docs making my work environment very dynamic and interesting.

Before you know it’ t is time to catch the next train back home and prepare my running shoes and racing bike for the next triathlon training after which I fall into a deep sleep, waking up the next morning never having a dull moment, then rinse & repeat.

See all Advent Calendar items 2024 here!