Name: Natalia Lebedeva
Place of birth: Novosibirsk, Russia
Date of Birth: 3 August, 1973
Attended TU/e from: June 1998-June 2002, for PhD research in physical chemistry at Schuit Institute of Catalysis, Laboratory of Inorganic Chemistry and Catalysis.
Current position: Research Fellow (Senior Scientist) for the European Commission at the Institute for Energy and Transport in Petten.

Why did you choose to go to TU/e?
There was a unique opportunity to conduct fundamental research on reaction mechanisms of electrocatalytic reactions on single crystals in the newly formed group of dr. Marc Koper (currently prof.dr. Marc Koper, Leiden University).  By that time I already had some experience in electrocatalysis and immediately understood that the proposed approach was just right - a strong combination of experimental work on well-defined surfaces and theoretical analysis and modeling.

What are you doing now and is this what you intended to do?
My task as a Research Fellow is to provide scientific evidence-based support to the European as well as global policy making and standardization in the field of electrochemical power sources for automotive applications. I always wanted to stay in research, but never actively explored the regulatory aspect of it. I now appreciate its importance for the everyday lives of millions of people; it is a great responsibility and a very rewarding position.

Why did you stay in The Netherlands, and are you planning to move to another country?
I have lived in the Netherlands for the past 16 years. The reason for staying in the Netherlands after my PhD was twofold: I have met my husband here, who is from Brazil and also did his PhD at the TU/e, and we decided to settle down between Russia and Brazil, which seemed fair. Second, we both have a career in the Netherlands and are happy here.

Spring next year my contract with the European Commission will end, and I will have to look for a new job. We are not planning to move to another country, since it is usually difficult to accommodate two professional careers at the same geographical location. Moreover, our children are very happy at the European school in Bergen and although their English, Portuguese and Russian is great, their main language is Dutch. So I would have to be creative looking for a new job.

What advice would you give current students?
From my own experience I can say that if you follow your heart and intuition, if you do what you truly like and do it well, everything is going to be alright. It may be different from what you want at that moment, but in time you’ll realize why things turned out the way they did.

To contact me, please email to lebedeva.natalia@gmail.com, I would be delighted to hear from you!