Best female PhD students 2018 - Birgit van Driel
Next Friday we celebrate the International Women’s Day. In the lead up to #IWD2019, we'll be posting profiles of our 2018 Cum Laude female PhD candidates on our Twitter account. The best female PhD student at TU Delft for 2018 will be awarded at our annual DEWIS symposium on 4 March. With this award, DEWIS rewards the quality of the PhDs dissertation and places her extraordinary achievement in the spotlights. #IWD2019 #BalanceforBetter.
‘Hi, my name is Birgit van Driel and I did my PhD at the faculty of Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering. I have a Bachelor’s degree in Molecular Science & Technology and a Master’s degree is in Material Science and Engineering.’
What was your research about? Why is this important?
‘My research was about the degradation of modern paintings containing the pigment titanium white. The project was a collaboration between the Rijksmuseum, Delft University of Technology, the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherland and AkzoNobel. The aim of my project was to understand and predict degradation damage caused by titanium white pigments in modern oil paintings. This is important because the expected problems have not manifested themselves yet. However, these paintings may be a ticking time bomb. Thus, for this project we used a preventive approach aiming to determine the extent of the problem, to understand the factors (paint formulation) influencing the problem and to elucidate the phenomenology of the problem (early warning signs). The main take away from my PhD research is the easy-to-use methodology that I developed to predict which modern paintings containing titanium white are going to degrade in the future.’
What did you find attractive about your research?
‘Combining scientific research with my passion for art and working in Amsterdam at the Rijksmuseum.’
What were the obstacles and difficulties? How did you tackle them?
‘During my project, I learned a lot about stakeholder management because I was working together with 4 organizations. Additionally, I tackled stagefright by presenting my research at various international conferences.’
What was your next step? What are you doing now?
‘I decided to switch from academia to strategy consulting. In November 2018 I started at A.T. Kearney in Amsterdam.’
Read all the interviews with all female Cum Laude PhD students of 2017-2018 here.