Jonathan Gnanadhas is our specialist in the field of electronics. He owns a bachelors in Electrical & Electronic Engineering and is finishing his master’s in Electrical Engineering in TU Delft with a thesis focused on Electromagnetics of Quantum Computing Hardware.  Jonathan is a real asset to the team and is packed with experience! He spent four years within the industry before starting his master’s, he worked at Broadcom and later at ABB. At both, he specialized in electronic hardware and embedded software development. After starting his master’s Jonathan wanted to keep his expertise on software in practice, so he started looking for cool projects to use his acquired skills on a daily basis. Luckily for Qlayers, he found a challenging project right here.
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In March 2018, Jonathan officially joined the Q-team. He is now focused on creating software for the controlled environment of the slash100. Jonathan is from India, but he has grown fond of the efficient and straight to the point style of the Dutchies. He really likes working at Qlayers, he appreciates that the start-up setting offers a workspace without bureaucracy where everyone can just focus on working. Furthermore, he loves the fun and energy that is always apparent in our young team. Jonathan is a real team player and always greets everyone with a smile!

Every other Thursday the Qlayers team gathers around the beamer, excitingly waiting for this week’s knowledge session. While drinking some beers, a presentation on a topic of interest is given by one of our team members. Last week, Bart enlightened us with a fascinating presentation on the measurement of particles. We learned about sensors, calibrations and the challenges particle measurement offer. Other presentations have been on aerodynamics, anti-icing microstructures and drag reduction tests. The presentations are meant to inspire, teach and help each other and to spark interesting discussions. Topics can be related to Qlayers but everything interesting, from nanoscience to yoga is allowed. The best part? Everyone is welcome! Our next knowledge sessions is on the 21st  of June, will we see you there? Click here to register. 

Every two weeks, we will post a blog about one of the Qlayers team members. This time, it's all about Derek. 
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24-year-old Derek Risseeuw loves to talk about aerodynamics. Whether it is about eddies, vortices or simulation programs, Derek knows it all. That’s why, when he first met co-founder Amber, they spent over an hour discussing the drag reducing mechanisms of Qlayers' sharkskin. Time well spent,  because since March 2018 we can call Derek our Aerodynamics Engineer.
At this moment, Derek is simulating the behaviour of paint particles in a flow to  make sure that no particles will escape the protected environment of the Slash100. In the future, he will also help with what inspired him in the first place; determining the optimal microstructure for aerodynamic efficiency.
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Only one of the many interesting things Derek has done before joining the company is his work for the Formula Delft team in 2015. Here he helped designing the aerodynamics of that years universities small formula 1 car. He and his team travelled to the Silverstone circuit (GB), the Hockenheimring (DE)  and the Red Bull Ring (AT) to see their car race against other others from universities all around the world!  

Next to his work at Qlayers, Derek is also writing his thesis on simulations of fluid structure interaction aimed towards flexible flapping wings. Conveniently enough his research and the work for Qlayers have a lot of overlap, which means he is in a constant learning process and many things he does has both value for the company and his own research.  When Derek is not busy solving complex aerodynamic problems he loves to play rugby or to go to the gym. 

If Birgit is not busy keeping our ‘Green Wall’ alive or telling us about the benefits of veganism this green lady is engaged in her research into viable market entry strategies. Birgit Henrich started working at Qlayers in March 2018, and next to her research she helps out with the marketing and business development. Our business development intern used to be a pro skier, who spend endless hours waxing her ski’s to win milliseconds by resistance reduction. With her current research, Birgit tries to enable Qlayers to reduce the resistance of something much bigger, namely: Aircraft. She hopes that her research will help Qlayers provide a more sustainable way of flying.

Birgit’s research is the end of her study ‘Science Business and Innovation’ at the VU University Amsterdam. The study is a combination of Beta-sciences, social sciences and  business courses. Birgit explains that the study is trying to bridge the gap between scientific research and the market by teaching you how to judge innovations by their market and societal value. She plans to start a master programme at the Delft University of Technology in September to deepen her knowledge in the field of technological innovation.  In the meantime, she tries to absorb as much experience as she can get here at Qlayers; "it is quite amazing to have the ability to learn so many things at once, I’m gaining experience in the field of business development but at the same time I’m learning about aerodynamics, 3D printing, networking, coatings, marketing and so much more."

Get inspired and visit our stand at the Hannover Messe on 25-26 April to meet Bart, Ruben and Mees and get some insights about our current developments and projects. 

Click here for more information about our stand. 
​See you there! 

Mees might not be a morning person, but for Qlayers our enthusiastic and resourceful mechanical engineer has absolutely no problem with the nine o’clock starting time. Mees is 21 years old and supports co-founder Ruben in the development of the Slash100, or as he likes to call it ‘The Slashie’. He finished his bachelors at the TU Delft in 2017 and now works full time for Qlayers. Mees got to know the company when he was studying abroad for a semester in Indonesia. By chance he followed a similar course as our co-founder Josefien and became intrigued by her story of Qlayers. Before he knew it, Mees used his Indonesian megabytes to skype with Ruben to discuss the possibilities of automated printing systems.
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In February 2018, Mees van Vondelen officially started working for Qlayers. Mees is definitely an allrounder and spends his days alternating between experimenting, building components and doing theoretical research. One of the things Mees appreciates about Qlayers is the flat hierarchy. Having the opportunity to influence the decision making process of the management is quite rare but a valuable and educational aspect for a young engineer. Describing the atmosphere of Qlayers, Mees would like to say that he cannot imagine that any of our employees would ever wake up with a reluctance to go to work!

After months of testing, Ruben was able to print our first sharkskin. Doesn't it look amazing? People have tried imprinting, machining, stickering and even lithography, since 1956, but they haven't been able to scale or customize. This might just be the first printing technique that can bring sharkskin to market! The qskin 1.0 helped us in making clients and investors fall in love with Qlayers in several speeddates we had during Meet the Startups event at YES!Delft.

Sharks and lasers. Officially the best combination to describe a technology. Apart from applying sharkskin to any surface, our technology demonstrator qbot 1.0 occasionally engraves motivational messages in our notebooks. Do you want to have one of your own? Have a look at our jobs page!

Amber can't stop talking about qlayers anyway, so why don't we give him an audience? The incubator YES!Delft allows us to reach a wide audience and tease growing markets with our functional coatings. Aircraft and wind turbines would benefit greatly from a drag-reducing sharkskin coating. Step one is automating the painting process!

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, to stay up to date.

We're off to Hello Tomorrow on 26-27 October, to present our sharkskin printing method. The summit for deep-tech entrepreneurs selected qlayers as one of 500 best projects, among over 3000 applicants. Do you think we should win one out of ten €15k track prizes? Or go straight for the €100k grand prize? For more info, look on the Hello Tomorrow website.
​To be continued.... :) 

qlayers is now officially part of the YES!Delft community! The name says it all, they incubate Young Entrepreneurial Students in Delft. The motto "Building Tomorrow's Leading Firms" and their focus on technology, perfectly fits qlayers' ambitions.

In 1987, the American sailing team 'Stars and Stripes' won an olympic medal and later the America's Cup. Their secret weapon was a riblet coating developed at NASA Langley. The technology worked so well, that it was temporarily banned from the America's Cup. Luckily, most industries don't ban technology when it is too good. Be like Stars and Stripes, people! And get involved in functional coatings that outcompete the status-quo.

StuD is officially helping us optimize our coating! Adding functionality to passive surfaces will change the world around us. But first, qlayers has to prove that something as simple as a coating can give racing teams the winning edge. Not by talking big, but by showing indisputable results, true Delft style. StuD is powering our proof of principle, to propel this research beyond the lab and into the hands of racers. They believe that students have something to offer. And we will prove them right. Curious how you can show the world what you have to offer? Have a look at www.stud.nl.

The Yes!Delft LaunchLab programme taught 10 teams how to build and test business models. LaunchDay is the spectacular ending to these 10 weeks of customer validation. By pitching in front of over 100 investors, advisors and potential customers, qlayers got some extra feedback. Yachting, sailing and shipping communities are all eager to support innovation in materials science. Let's make the shark swim, before we teach it to fly.

To wrap up the TU Delft Startup Voucher programme, qlayers pitched at the General Meeting of the Netherlands Aerospace Group. We even got prince Constantijn Van Oranje-Nassau fascinated by functional coatings! Like everyone we talk to, he was eager to see what our coatings can do in real life. Let's not disappoint him!

First place at AccessDay, a pitching competition by the Port of Rotterdam, winning admission to the Launchlab programme of Yes ! Delft.

Selection for the 2016 Startup Voucher & Coaching Programme at the faculty of Aerospace Engineering, TU Delft.