My name is Niels. I'm interested in a lot of things related to science and tech. Currently, I work as a data engineer at Data Minded, a consultancy based in Leuven, where I build cloud native big-data solutions for startups and enterprise. Before going into data engineering I was a researcher in materials science and electron microscopy. I did my Ph.D. in physics at the University of Antwerp and the Belgian Nuclear Research Center, after which I did a post-doc at the Max-Planck-Institute für Eisenforschung in Düsseldorf, Germany. I researched metals and alloys, radiation effects in nuclear materials, small-scale microstructural characterization, and advanced scanning transmission electron microscopy methods. I've been a longtime enthusiast of python, data, high performance computing, Linux and open source software. This website is a little side project where I want to write about things that interest me and share random things I learned.