Author: THOMAS OPSOMER

As a master’s student in our last year, we reached one of the most important and undoubtedly one of the hardest points in our career so far: Deciding what we want to do for a living. Not knowing where we will end up or how long we can stay in one place. It is a stressful, but impactful moment in our lives.

When I graduated from KU Leuven in 2022, I had to make a decision. Start working, pursue a PhD, do another master… I had no idea what to do and just followed what felt best at that moment, so I decided to go abroad to do another master. It is a decision I will never regret. Not only because I had the time of my life and met so many interesting people, but especially because it made me realize what I want to do in my professional career. It made me fall in love with the field of batteries and battery recycling.

During these 2 years in the AMIR master, I discovered my passion and the area I want to dedicate my professional life to. I feel I can be a pioneer in this area and really make a difference. For me the most important thing in my career is that I can make noticeable advancements and can try to fundamentally chance something. The field of battery recycling is one of the fastest growing and developing areas at the moment and I cannot wait to contribute to this. There are still so many challenges and opportunities so I am confident I will never end up in a boring and repetitive job. Also, because this is such an international environment, I can work in this amazing industry while discovering different parts of the world. For me, this is the perfect way to combine my professional passion in battery recycling with my passion for traveling around the world and discovering new cultures.

As a conclusion of this reflection, I cannot wait to get started and dive into the professional world. We will encounter hard and difficult times, but the reward of accomplishment and making a difference is worth all the hard work, long days and many sacrifices.

Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men and weak man create hard times ~ G. Michael Hopf

Hi there and welcome to my blog! My name is Thomas Opsomer, I am 24 years old and currently studying at the Technical University of Madrid and also living in Madrid, Spain. I am in the second year of my master AMIR (Advanced Materials: Innovative Recycling) where we focus on circular economy and recycling of construction waste. In the first year, I studied in Bordeaux, France where we focused on chemistry and advanced materials.

I already hold a master’s degree in Bioscience Engineering: Environmental Technology at KU Leuven, Belgium. However, the program at KU Leuven zoomed less into the profound understanding of sustainable use of minerals and materials recycling. AMIR offers the possibility to deepen my knowledge in different aspects of materials science, the energy efficiency of processes and the fundamentals of waste recovery. Especially, since I want to pursue a career in battery recycling and developing new and innovative methods to improve recycling efficiencies, this master’s is a very valuable addition to my curriculum.

This whole experience of moving abroad has broadened my horizons and inspired me in many ways. I met so many interesting people along the way from all over the world and even got to know myself better. I strongly believe that these genuine connections made with people from different backgrounds and cultures helped to develop myself and will also help me to develop my professional career.

I sincerely hope we can connect on this blog to learn with and from each other, because, what is more rewarding than working together to create a sustainable world?