I graduated in September 2002 from Wageningen University, The Netherlands as Master of Science (or the Dutch title Ir.) in Meteorology. I specialized in thunderstorms and their electrical aspects.
Currently, I am working towards my Ph.D. at Laboratoire d'Aérologie in Toulouse, France, where I study the mechanisms in thunderstorms that generate strong lightning discharges that can trigger sprites. Sprites are brief but huge electrical discharges far above thunderstorm systems that were first recognized by the scientific world in the early nineties. They have been succesfully observed by a camera system in the Pyrenees during the summer of 2003, and at least two sprite-producing storm systems happened within reach of a SAFIR intracloud lightning detection network.
My earlier research is presented below.

• "Relations between three-dimensional lightning activity and hydrometeor types in the June 13th 1998 Oklahoma City tornadic supercell"
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I worked on this in the first half of 2001 as a Visiting Research Associate at the Cooperative Institute for Mesocale Meteorological Studies from the Oklahoma University and the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma (USA) with Dr. Don MacGorman.

• "Total lightning activity in relation to environmental and radar characteristics of thunderstorms"
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The first research project for my thesis, which I finished in May 2000 at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) in De Bilt, with Dr. Iwan Holleman and Ir. Herman Wessels as supervisors.

I also performed a 4-month study finished in March 2002 at the KNMI with Dr. Sander Tijm after the effects different initialization methods have on model forecasted convective precipitation and wind fields in the first forecast hours of the HiRLAM mesoscale model (0.1-0.2 degree grid spacing).

My finished work at KNMI consisted of combining all operational upper air data available (mostly AMDAR aircraft) into a vertical profile of temperature and wind. Together with surface dewpoint data, instability parameters are derived from the profile. Timeseries of these are displayed in a graph, which is especially useful in critical weather situations such as thunderstorm nowcasting, given the high frequency of profiles (4 to 10 per day) as opposed to regular radiosonde balloon data (only twice per day).

From August 2003 till December 2003, I followed the graduate courses Cloud & Precipitation Physics and Advanced Atmospheric Dynamics I at the School of Meteorology in Norman, Oklahoma.