Dr. Ir. Peter Jansens
Member of the Board of Directors for Scientific Division II and III
Dr. Ir. Peter Jansens (born 1966) joined the Board of Directors on 1 January 2023.
He has previously worked at the Dutch chemical company DSM, where he held various positions as Corporate Scientist, Research Manager and most recently as CEO of the Olatein joint venture.
Born in the Dutch city of Roosendaal, Dr. Jansens studied chemical engineering at Delft University of Technology (Netherlands), where in 1994 he completed his doctoral degree on the subject of an industrial separation method to refine organic substances through the fractional crystallization of melts.
Dr. Jansens’ career has been shaped by his ability to switch between research, production, and management tasks, all the while adopting and refining skills from all areas. For instance, Dr. Jansens initially continued his scientific work in the research and development department at Shell International Chemicals in Amsterdam. He then worked as a process engineer and subsequently took on the role of deputy head at a chemical plant in Singapore that produces styrene monomer and propylene oxide.
In 2000, Dr. Jansens returned to the Netherlands having been appointed professor of separation and crystallization technology at Delft University of Technology, where he conducted research for the next ten years. He headed the Process & Energy department and was scientific director of the Delft Center for Sustainable Industrial Processes.
Dr. Jansens joined the Dutch chemical company Royal DSM in Sittard in 2008, where he worked in several management positions in research, innovation management, and new business development. Until recently, the company produced industrial chemicals and technical plastics but now focuses on foodstuffs and food supplements. For the last two years, Dr. Jansens has worked as CEO of Olatein, a joint venture between DSM and a French agro-industrial group, where he was responsible for developing, designing, and establishing a method for commercially producing a plant-based protein isolate from cold-pressed rapeseed cake.
Peter Jansens brought with him a wealth of experience from numerous Dutch, German, and European steering committees. For examplewas he a member of the Supervisory Board of the Institute for Sustainable Process Technology (an organization for joint research conducted between companies and universities), a member of the GVC Crystallization Subject Division, as well as a member of the Board of SusChem (a European technology platform for sustainable chemistry).
In 2005, Dr. Jansens was awarded the DECHEMA Prize by the German Society for Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology (DECHEMA). He received the prize for his pioneering work on the crystallization and development of integrated separation methods, ranging from molecular understanding to process design. At that time, he was the first foreign scientist to have received this prize.
