PhD: Developing metal-organic frameworks for Odour-Based Selective Recognition of Veterinary Disease

The NWA-ORC of the NWO (Research along Routes by Consortia) supports interdisciplinary research that leads to scientific and societal breakthroughs. A team of scientists with complementary expertise of 5 universities, 3 universities of applied sciences and 18 co-funding commercial and societal partners have joined efforts in Odor-Based Selective Recognition of Veterinary Disease (OBSeRVeD).

Chickens that are diseased produce specific odours . In this project we will develop an electronic nose (e-nose) for early detection and recognition of specific diseases in an early stage. This should drastically reduce the use of antibiotics and other chemicals, and improve the welfare of the animals and the environmental impact of livestock farming. The realisation of such an e-nose requires a multidisciplinary to combine porous materials with a high affinity for the disease related odour molecules, with innovative sensor platforms and machine learning to train the system to recognise the odour fingerprint related to specific diseases. As such 5 universities, 3 universities of applied sciences and 18 co-funding commercial and societal partners are joined effort in the project “Odor-Based Selective Recognition of Veterinary Disease (OBSeRVeD)”. The 5 million euro project is funded via NWA-ORC (Dutch Science Agenda, research along Routes by Consortia) by NWO (Dutch Science Foundation).

This PhD project specifically entails the development of metal-organic frameworks that will selectively adsorb the targeted odour molecules, and by which adsorption leads to a change in the properties of the MOF that can detected by the sensor platform (electrical capacity, mechanical resonance and photonic properties). You will also develop convenient deposition techniques to achieve thin MOF-layers on the sensor platforms. You will collaborate and communicate with a large variety of scientists (material scientists, analytical chemists, electrical engineers, veterinary scientists, data scientists and social scientists).

The project will be supervised by dr. ir. Monique A. van der Veen. The van der Veen group focuses on the development of hybrid materials for separation, catalysis and electronics. The group is part of the Catalysis Engineering section at the Department of Chemical Engineering of TU Delft.