Delft University of Technology: Paulien Herder appointed Dean Faculty of Applied Sciences

The Executive Board has appointed Professor Paulien Herder as dean of the Faculty of Applied Sciences (AS) as of 1 March 2021. She is currently chair of the Chemical Engineering department at AS.

Paulien Herder graduated in Chemical Engineering from TU Delft in 1994. In 1999 she received her PhD from the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management (TPM) for her thesis ‘Process Design in a Changing Environment’. After her PhD, she stayed on at TPM, where she continued her research into the design of large-scale complex systems. She was closely involved in the international research consortium Next Generation Infrastructures. From 2004 to 2007 she was also the director of education. In 2009, she was appointed Professor of Engineering Systems Design in Energy & Industry. Between 2013 and 2019 she was director of the Delft Energy Initiative and from 2014 to 2018 she was chair of the Engineering Systems and Services department.

In 2019, she transferred to the Department of Process & Energy at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Maritime Engineering and Materials Science (3mE). There she became programme leader for e-Refinery, the interfaculty programme developing technology and systems for the production of raw materials and fuels from renewable energy. Since 2020, she has been chairing the Chemical Engineering department at AS.


Herder represents the Dutch knowledge institutions in the top team of the Energy Top Sector and fulfils various administrative and supervisory roles in the energy domain. She is a member of the Supervisory Board of the Hotelschool The Hague and sat on the board of the NWO domain Applied and Engineering Sciences since 2019.