Richard van de Sanen is the scientific director of the Eindhoven Institute for Renewable Energy Systems (EIRES) and a professor at the Department of Applied Physics of the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. He is also a research group leader at the Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research (DIFFER) where he has been director from 2011 until July 2020.
He is a member of several (scientific) advisory boards for (inter-)national programs, institutes and departments. He was the chairman of the advisory committee on Electrochemical Conversion and Materials (ECCM) between 2017-2022, and an active member of the Energy committee of the European Academies for Science Advisory Council (EASAC). In 2021 he became a member of the NWO-TTW board and since 2022 he represents this board in the NWO-NWA program committee. Since 2023 he is a member of the Topteam Energy (Captain of Science of Topsector Energy