Elise Roelse

Chemical Engineering

"My name is Elise Roelse. I am currently in my second year of the Master’s in Chemical Engineering at TU Delft. I chose the Process Engineering track because I am passionate about transport phenomena and personally prefer it as it is less theoretical than the Product Engineering track. This is one example of the flexibility of personalising the curriculum that the programme offers. And then the international and multidisciplinary environment in which we worked together and shared perspectives allowed us to motivate each other in the first year to keep working so hard every single day. And after those long days — especially in the first semester — having a few beers in one of the faculty buildings or one of the many bars in the city centre made the whole experience all the more satisfying. 

The object of my thesis is to understand what causes an aortic aneurysm to form, and to improve the risk assessment for someone who is diagnosed with one. I focus on one aspect, which includes the displacement of the aorta during a cardiac cycle using computational fluid dynamics. I have no knowledge of biology, but that is irrelevant. That’s why I chose the programme; the skills we learn are applicable in an unimaginable number of fields. After I graduate, I want to work in industry, probably as a process technologist. That’s because I like the more practical nature of implementing solutions to everyday problems in the short term, and making a process more efficient or sustainable."