Being the Co-Founder and Co-Owner of a tutoring company: Bijles Beta. Managing the finances, marketing, job applications, customer contact and tutoring the courses mathematics, physics and chemistry. At this moment we have given more than 1000 hours of 'bijles' with a team consisting of more than 10 tutors.

Giving educational tours to private or public interests in the Blaauw Observatory. Operating the Gratama (40cm) telescope & outreach activities like giving workshops on infrared or spectrometers.

Regularly giving full-dome presentations (max 250 visitors) on astronomical topics in the DOT Live Planetarium. Using SkySkan DigitalSky 2 software to operate the system and to build shows on topics like Mars, galaxies or exoplanets.

Planetarium operator for the Kapteyn astronomical mobile planetarium (Giving full-dome presentations on astronomy for primary- and high school students).

Being in charge of a learning community consisting of first year astronomy students. Serving as a source of information and helping the students find their way in the new environment. Besides functioning as a teaching assistant for the first year bachelor course 'Physics Laboratory 1'.

This study concerned the trade-off between design and manufacturing of terahertz diffraction gratings. The implementation of performance and functional requirements has been presented using elementary relations, parametric equations, and verified using Zemax Opticstudio® dedicated optical modeling software leading to a preliminary grating element design. The analysis has shown that it is possible to combine all wavelength bands ranging from 35 micron to 400 micron into one grating module under constrained conditions. An investigation into possible periodic structures of the grating element led to blazed (sawtooth) structures which were optimized using rigorous PCGrate® simulations showing a theoretical average diffraction efficiency above 80% in the negative first order for the primary wavelength band. Direct machining methods such as diamond machining and laser ablation and a lithographic route using anisotropic wet etching show potential as feasible manufacturing techniques to making our grating elements, each showing less than 10% loss in diffraction efficiency due to expected manufacturing errors compared with the ideally blazed structure. Grade: 8

MCP-PMT detector radiation hardness tests for space LIDAR applications. I participated in the planning and execution of proton irradiation experiments at the AGOR cyclotron facility (Center for Advanced Radiation Technology). Responsible for the characterisation before, after and during the irradiation using quantum-efficiency spectroscopy, photoluminescence spectroscopy and pulse-height distribution techniques. Finally I estimated the possible degradation effects on the MCP-PMT detector in space based on theoretical calculations, using SPENVIS simulations and experimental results. Grade: 9