A chemistry major with a specialisation in nanotechnology and spectroscopic characterisation techniques including nanoparticles synthesis, surface chemistry development and fabrication for applications in material development, sensing, bio-imaging and catalytic processes. Keywords: nanochemistry, nanoparticles, microscopy, nanocellulose, microalgae, flocculation I am currently working as a doctoral student at the department of Chemical Engineering, KU Leuven on ‘Developing a nanocellulose crystals based reversible flocculant for harvesting microalgae through better understanding of the interaction between the flocculant and the microalgal cell surface’. Microalgae have in the past decade emerged as a new biomass resource to complement conventional biomass feedstocks for the production of food, feed, energy or materials. Yet, microalgae biomass production remains costly and energy-intensive, mainly because of the difficulty to separate microalgal cells from the culture medium. Due to the small size of the cells (± 5 µm) and their low biomass concentration in the culture medium (± 0.5 g L-1 dry matter), harvesting by centrifugation or membrane filtration is challenging. The energy demand for harvesting could be reduced by an order of magnitude by flocculating the microalgae into larger particles that can be pre-concentrated by gravity sedimentation prior to a final dewatering step. The main drawback of flocculation is the need for chemicals that end up in and contaminate the harvested biomass. The ultimate solution to this problem is to create a reversible flocculant that can be removed from the biomass after harvesting. Reversible flocculation can be achieved by using pH-responsive functional groups that interact with the negative surface of microalgal cells at low pH, and detach from the cells at high pH. Such a reversible flocculant could be re-used multiple times, thus improving the sustainability of the harvesting process.