Assoc Prof Materials Eng @KU_Leuven | ERC grantee | Formerly Engineer @Apple, Postdoc @Stanford, PhD @EPFL. Printed/flexible/stretchable electronic materials.

Leuven, Belgium
Insightful report! All my courses include already oral exams and now I’m considering more group exercise sessions in class… It is crazy how in my few years of teaching I had to transition from full online after COVID to as much human interaction as possible!
MIT published a brutally honest report on what AI is doing to students. A committee of professors and students spent five months studying how AI changed learning on campus, and the findings read like a warning to every university on the planet. Study groups are disappearing. Office hours are emptying out. Problem sets and take-home exams no longer prove anything, because AI can produce credible solutions to almost any written assignment in the undergraduate curriculum. Students who lean on chatbots lose mastery and confidence, and some slip into what the report calls cognitive surrender, reaching for AI at the first hint of struggle. The numbers are rough. 46 percent of surveyed MIT undergrads use LLMs daily. 90 percent worry about their own overreliance. Undergrads who feel AI makes them replaceable now outnumber those who feel it makes them capable. The committee's answer surprised me. They refused to fight AI with surveillance. The report calls AI detectors unreliable, says lockdown browsers feel like spying, and warns that policing students builds a classroom atmosphere of mutual distrust. Instead, MIT wants to rebuild education around the things AI can't replace. That means oral exams, semester portfolios, in-person project work, and a required social component in every subject. The report even floats the idea of rethinking grades entirely, since without a GPA to optimize, much of the incentive to cheat with AI evaporates. The committee warns professors against replacing undergrad research assistants with AI agents just because they're cheaper, because a university exists to grow people, not output. The most famous tech school on earth admitted the machines broke its way of teaching. Its answer is more humans, not more software.
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🔥 We are hiring🔥! Are you a recent PhD graduate with strong experience in thermoelectrics 🔥⚡❄️, and looking for the next step in your career 🚀? Join us to work on laser-printed metal chalcogenide flexible thermoelectrics. Apply by Sept 30 👇! kuleuven.be/personeel/jobsit…
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1/🧵Our latest paper is out in @AdvPortfolio ! TAB-2TFSI is a wonderful yet overlooked dopant for conjugated polymer thermoelectrics. It not only provided the best performance at time zero, but it also showed better stability than other common dopants. advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley…
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2/🧵 Even better, it showed "universal" character, performing very well on many different polymers. Thank you to the first authors, Juhyung Park @Shubhradip07 and our collaborators at @KU_Leuven (@Dr_Escudero ) @FWOVlaanderen , @ERC_Research @te_materials ; @TEconversion
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🧵1/2 Are you working with PEDOT:PSS and want to know more about its structure and doping level with just 1-minute measurement? Check out one of our latest papers @AdvPortfolio:
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F. Molina-Lopez retweeted
Paying peer reviewers = 85% faster editorial decisions. And payments gave high-quality reviews. (the story is described in Nature) At Biology Open, peer reviewers were paid for high quality reviews. $290 per peer review. Miraculously, the time to editorial decisions DROPPED: - Unpaid reviews: 38 days. - Paid reviews: 5-6 days. And review quality WENT UP. 📍How it works: “When researchers apply to become paid reviewers for Biology Open, we screen their CVs and check whether they’re legitimate and have peer-review experience. We currently have 500 pre-contracted reviewers from all over the world. Ideally, what I envision is a system where reviewer applicants undertake a manuscript-reviewing test. And we’d review that review, so if it scored high enough, we’d hire them.” - Editor-in-chief Daniel Gorelick. Nature: “Do you think paying reviewers could work in other journals and in other disciplines?” Editor-in-chief: “Absolutely. There’s been such a profound aversion to paying peer reviewers, whether it’s on principle or because people think it will never work. We’ve demonstrated that it works.” So... At last, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. __
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1/🧵Happy to share our latest work on laser-printed flexible inorganic thermoelectrics (TEs) ⚡️🔥, published in @Nature_NPJ Flexible Electronics: rdcu.be/fm99C We are getting very close to providing meaningful power 🔋 values from heat wasted in daily-life scenarios!
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2/🧵Actually, a device installed on the hot water pipe running into his office wall heater, we could have already powered a few sensors for the IoT. Moreover, he demonstrated on-demand cooling ❄️ below room temperature!
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Great work being carried out by Suo Tu in our team. Suo is working on printed organic electronics for waste heat conversion, focusing on flexible, solution-processable and sustainable thermoelectric materials.  I’m excited to see where it leads next.
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We kicked off MatSus 2026 in Barcelona! I will be presenting our recent work (@Shubhradip07 ) on stable doping of p-type thermoelectric polymers on Thursday pm (symposium B3)! @nanoGe_Conf @ERC_Research @te_materials @ScaleMte
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Proud of my great research group! This year is a transition year with many PhDs graduating and the typical postdoc turnover. I hope funding will allow us to keep the science going! @AltynaiQaidar,@Shubhradip07
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A great visit at KU Leuven today with Prof. Jeonghun Kwak from Seoul National University 🇰🇷 From quantum dot thermoelectrics and quantum confinement, to QD-based memristors for neuromorphic systems. Excellent discussions with the team. Science moves faster when ideas travel.
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We are delighted to welcome Catarina Quitério as the newest PhD researcher in our group! Catarina will be working on Laser-Printed Flexible Sustainable Thermoelectrics, pushing forward new materials and processes for energy harvesting on flexible platforms. Welcome to the team!
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The final program of the MATSUS26 conference is out!📢. I will be presenting our latest work on doped conjugated polymers for thermoelectrics, along with top-researcher colleagues. @Shubhradip07 @ERC_Research
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Today, I had the pleasure of sharing the role of external jury member with Mariano Campoy-Quiles during the PhD defense of Bram Bijnens from @uhasselt in organic bolometers for infrared detection. Congratulations to the new doctor and thanks to Koen Vandewal for the invitation.
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Today we went for bowling and dinner afterwards. It felt so good to see the group enjoying some free time together out of the lab. Thanks @AltynaiQaidar for organizing it! @Shubhradip07
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Congratulations to Dr Hasan Baysal! The 3rd graduate of the group and our expert in 3D printing and PEDOT:PSS aerogels! Thanks to the jury members and the funding agency. @mattana_giorgio @ERC_Research @mtm_kuleuven @Shubhradip07
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Always great to meet my friend and colleague @mattana_giorgio from Paris Cité who came to @KU_Leuven to serve as jury member for the PhD defense of Hasan Baysal. We are enjoying Belgium beer diversity.
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