Jakob (Jaap) joined the University of Huddersfield in October 2011 as a Research Professor, with his primary objective the re-establishment of the Medium Energy Ion Scattering (MEIS) Facility, formerly based at STFC Daresbury Laboratory within the International Institute for Accelerator Applications at Huddersfield. Officially reopened in 2015 after extensive upgrading, the MEIS laboratory under his charge, is now part of the UK National Ion Beam Centre, funded by EPSRC to provide analytical support to the UK research community.

After obtaining his Ir. degree in Applied Physics from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, he moved to the UK to undertake postgraduate research in the Department of Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Salford, obtaining his PhD in 1979. Following an Adjunct Lectureship in Physics at the University of Arhus (DK) and a 6-year Senior Scientific Officer post in the Department of Chemistry at UMIST, he returned to the University of Salford as Lecturer in Electronic and Electrical Engineering, was later promoted Senior Lecturer and after moving to Physics, to Reader in Physics in 2000. In 2003 he became Professor of Ion Beam Physics at Salford where, from 2003 to 2007, he was also Head of Physics.

• Ranges, disorder formation & annealing of ultra-low energy implants into Si using medium energy ion scattering (MEIS).
• The characterisation and metrology of dielectric nanometre films for microelectronic and optical applications using MEIS and related high depth resolution analytical techniques.
• The evolution of the Cs build up in SIMS studied by MEIS
• The characterisation of high current ion beam plasma using mass & energy analysis and Langmuir probe.
• The application of in situ ion beam irradiation in the TEM.
• Charge build-up and compensation studies in E beam ALM & equipment development