Diversity & Inclusion Team

Faculty of Civil Engineering & Geosciences

Vision

The Diversity & Inclusion Committee of the Faculty of Civil Engineering & Geosciences (CEG) gives solicited and unsolicited advice to the Faculty’s managerial bodies. Together, we think of effective ways to implement our vision, based on three main pillars:

Events

The Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Team

Background

The ED&I Team was emplaced in September 2022 with the goal of providing advice to the Faculty on the strengthening of ED&I Policies. The ED&I Team is composed of 7 individuals from the 7 Departments of the CEG Faculty, a representative of HR and the Faculty Diversity Officer who acted also as the chair of the team. While rooted in the Departments and in HR, the team members do not formally represent them.

Towards the end of 2023, the team decided to introduce the possibility of a duo-construction which means that two persons would join the Team. This has the advantage of sharing the burden of activities and increasing the visibility of the Team in the Departments. At present (April 2024) this possibility has been adopted by GRS, WM and T&P.

Early 2024 the ED&I Team realized it would like to be able to act independently from the Faculty Office in certain situations. To this end, the Team now nominates its Chair from its regular members for a duration of one year and then rotate the task. Currently, Prof.dr. Caroline Katsman is acting chair. The Faculty Diversity Officer Prof Giovanni Bertotti remains a member of the ED&I Team and in general, FDO and ED&I Team collaborate very closely.

ED&I Members

Caroline Katsman (HE) - chair
Caroline joined TU Delft in 2014 after receiving a Delft Technology Fellowship. She is Professor in Oceans and Climate at the Hydraulic Engineering Department. As a woman in STEM, she has seen many good and bad examples of how the work environment deals with diversity and inclusion issues throughout her career, at various universities and research institutions. She is dedicated to put that experience to use for improving the workplace at CEG, among others as a member of the Academic Career Committee.

Edo Abraham (WM)
Edo is an Associate Professor at the department of Water Management. Edo’s research focuses on water and energy infrastructure systems. He develops and applies novel modelling, control and optimisation approaches for making integrated water-energy-agricultural systems more efficient and resilient. Edo has an interest in contributing to and shaping healthy conversations and change in his workplaces, and help operationalise shared goals in diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Mar Palmeros Parada (WM)
Mar is an Assistant Professor in the Water Management Department where she researches the potential sustainability and circularity impacts of resource recovery from residual water streams, with a keen interest in Responsible Innovation and Sustainability Transitions. She studied in Mexico (IPN), Sweden (LU) and NL (TUDelft), where she was member of LGBTQ and feminist groups. As researcher and lecturer, she’s interested in diversity, inclusion, and equity in science and technology. With her participation in the D&I team in CEG, she aims to contribute to building a university environment where everyone feels welcomed and empowered to participate.

Sebastiaan Geiger (GSE)
Sebastian joined TU Delft in March 2022 as the Professor for Sustainable Geoenergy at the Department of Geoscience and Engineering. Before joining TU Delft, he was a professor at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland for 16 years. He and his wife have two teenage daughters, and all three of them keep him grounded.

Leon Hombergen (3MD)
Leon is a civil engineer, and for 1 day/week Assistant Professor at the Department of Materials, Mechanics, Management & Design (3Md), at the section of Infrastructure Design and Management. He mostly contributes to the education of the Master Construction Management & Engineering on the fields of Procurement & Contracting in the Building Industry. At TU Delft he is one of the founders of the LGBT-network TrueU. The other days of the week he works for Rijkswaterstaat and he also is a party chairman at the Delft Municipality Council.

Lisa van der Linde (HE)
Lisa is currently doing a PhD on the modelling of backward erosion piping in the Hydraulic Engineering Department. Before rejoining the TU Delft she worked as a flood defence consultant. She believes everybody should feel welcome in their place of work/study and is therefore eager to work towards creating such an environment.

Eliz-Mari Lourens (ES)
Eliz-Mari is an Assistant Professor holding a dual appointment at the Engineering Structures and Hydraulic Engineering Department. Her work focuses on the development of monitoring methodologies for data-driven assessment and diagnostics of structures, with attention to an optimal integration of physics-based models with machine learning techniques. Her most challenging, but also most rewarding project at the moment is raising two young daughters.

Irene Martínez (T&P)
Irene is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Transport and Planning and co-director of the hEAT lab focused on electric and automated transport research. Her research interests are traffic flow theory and control in the era of automated, connected, and shared mobility. She has lived and worked in five countries and believes that intercultural fluency and embracing new perspectives are crucial to developing innovative solutions and achieving inclusive academic excellence.

Yongqiu Zhu (T&P)
My name is Yongqiu Zhu. I have been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Transport and Planning since August 2023. My main research focus is addressing the challenges of uncertainty and scalability in user-centric decision-making problems within passenger transport systems. Outside of work, I live in Delft with my husband, Hongrui, and our daughter, Xiaoli. During weekends and holidays, we love to explore new places, travelling around the Netherlands and beyond. I enjoy spending quality time with my family.
As a woman, a mother, a foreigner, and someone in the early stages of my career, I understand the challenges that underrepresented groups may face. That's why I joined the ED&I team: to promote the creation of a safe and inclusive environment. I believe such an environment is essential for fostering a workplace where everyone feels valued, respected, and motivated to contribute their best.

Alfredo Nunez (ES)
Alfredo is an Associate Professor at the Department of Engineering Structures. The research of Alfredo is on the development of Intelligent Railway Infrastructures. Alfredo has been a visiting scholar at universities in Slovenia, Italy, Spain, Chile, Colombia, China and the USA, and has a major interest on supporting the community at the faculty to achieve our equity, diversity and inclusion goals.

Joris Timmermans (GRS)

Alessio Savazzi (GRS)
Alessandro is a PhD candidate in the department of Geoscience and Remote Sensing. He first joined the faculty of civil engineering as a student in Environmental Engineering. Now his research focuses on atmospheric convection and clouds. He is convinced that diversity fosters innovation only when it is a synonym of inclusion and equity. All newcomers should feel safe in our faculty and be able to thrive without having to fight harder than others or having to hide their diversity.

Giovanni Bertotti (GSE)
Giovanni is professor for Geology at the GSE Department. Attracted to geology because of its combination of natural and exact sciences, Giovanni has worked in different places in the world with particular focus on Africa and Brazil. He has joined TU Delft in 2010 and has decided in the last years to devote more of his time to the “human” component of the organisation dedicating time to D&I issues and the PhDs of the Faculty (he is the director of the Faculty Graduate School).

Desirée de Jong (Human Resources)