Veni grant for Dr. Kryss Waldschlager

NWO has awarded Veni funding of up to EUR 280,000 to 188 promising researchers from the full breadth of science. This will allow the laureates to further develop their own research ideas over the next three years. One of the winners is HEH's Dr. Kryss Waldschlager.

Research on microplastics
Dr. Walschlager's research focuses on microplastics. Microplastics pose social, environmental and economic threats in the aquatic environment. While their toxicity has been the focus of interest for a long time, first voices have been raised concerning their impact on large-scale environmental processes such as sediment transport. Microplastic-sediment aggregation appears to enhance sedimentation of both microplastics and sediments, which might alter sediment transport along rivers significantly and thus influence fluvial ecosystems as well as the navigability of our waterways. However, this process cannot be quantified or represented in fate models yet. This project, therefore, aims to parameterize microplastic-sediment aggregation to enable the use of fate models and to assess its impact on aquatic sediment transport. This is an essential step towards a better understanding of microplastic-sediment interaction in the aquatic environment as well as improved microplastic fate modelling. 

We will combine systematic physical model experiments on the aggregation behaviour of different microplastics and sediments with in-situ measurements and implement the developed parameterisation of the aggregation process in a fate model (Delft3D) to enable direct use of the project results by practitioners. For the in-situ measurements and the model development, ports (Port of Rotterdam and Port of Hamburg) are used as case studies, as they exhibit high microplastic concentrations and strongly varying environmental conditions (e.g., salinity, flow velocities), allowing adequate transfer of the results to both fluvial and marine environments. With the fate model, microplastic sinks will be identified and future scenarios for increasing microplastic concentrations will be analysed to inform regulatory bodies and stakeholders about potential future challenges. By collaborating with several port authorities, the results will be translated into direct measures to reduce microplastic pollution in the aquatic environment.

Veni grant

Veni is an individual science grant, part of the NWO Talent Programme, and aimed at researchers who have recently obtained their PhDs. They will conduct research within the full breadth of science. The 188 grants from the 2022 Veni round are divided between 26 grants at ZonMw, 23 at Applied and Engineering Sciences (AES), 69 at the Science Domain, and 70 at Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH). The projects receiving funding therefore focus on a wide variety of topics: from river deltas on Mars to future-proof general practitioner care, and from the crusades of Louis IX to flying robots for maintaining offshore wind turbines.