Principal researcher
Marcel Kempers is the founder of Transitions Lab and its principal researcher. He leads the Lab's three active research programmes — finance and payment systems, electrification and e-mobility, and water access systems — and is the primary author of the Lab's signature BRW methodology.
His research sits at the intersection of technology policy, financial-systems analysis, and infrastructure transitions in emerging markets. The current research agenda grew out of five years of sustained fieldwork and commercial operations in East Africa and the Dutch Caribbean, combined with an academic programme at TU Delft's Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management.
He is concurrently CEO and co-founder of Reef Support B.V., a marine-conservation technology company active since 2020 with operations across the Dutch Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and Europe; a Research Assistant in Financing Systems and Electric Vehicles at TU Delft TPM; and an MSc candidate in Management of Technology (Finance & Technology specialisation) at the same faculty, with a thesis on ROAM Electric and Kenya's electric-motorcycle transition under the supervision of Dr. Gideon Ndubuisi. The thesis is the methodological crucible from which the Lab's BRW typology emerged.
His prior operational record includes a role as Strategic Advisor to the St. Eustatius Transport Directorate (aviation analysis and Port Facility Security Plan, 2022); co-founder and Team Manager of Pyropower Europe B.V. (2019–2021, leading a ten-person team across four countries); Design Engineer at Silverwing Aeronautics (patent filed for BSc aerospace thesis work covered in BBC, Daily Mail, and New Scientist); and Guest Lecturer at TU Delft (2021–22). Degrees: MSc Management of Technology (TU Delft, 2023–2026, GPA 8.5) and BSc Aerospace Engineering (TU Delft, 2017–2020, GPA 7.5), with Erasmus exchange at Politecnico di Milano and minors at Tokyo Institute of Technology and Tsinghua University.
Recognition includes the ESA Copernicus Masters Overall Winner award (2020), MT/Sprout 25u25 selection (2021), FD 50 Young Talents selection (2021), and Hult Prize Tokyo regional qualifier (2019). He has raised more than €500,000 in cumulative non-dilutive funding across operational and research vehicles, and works in English, Mandarin (professional), and Dutch (basic).
On the separation between roles
The Lab's research activities are conducted independently of the founder's commercial roles at Reef Support and the Autonomous Intelligence Development project in Singapore. The academic affiliation with TU Delft provides supervision and ethics oversight for fieldwork but does not dictate publication timing or content. Research outputs are published under the Lab's own name and are held independently. See the About page for the full account of how these relationships are maintained.
Academic advisors
Two academic advisors currently supervise the Lab's research activities under formal TU Delft arrangements.
Operational partners
The Lab's field research is made possible by active collaboration with a network of operational partners. The partnerships are structured as research-cooperation arrangements rather than as commercial engagements; the Lab does not receive remuneration from partners for research activities, and partners do not direct the Lab's research output.
Peer-review and critical-reader pool
Substantive Lab working papers and deep-dive entries are circulated to a pool of peer readers before public release. The pool includes academic researchers in transitions studies, payment-systems infrastructure, development finance, and East African policy; practitioners from the fintech, e-mobility, and water sectors; and programme officers at relevant funders. The pool is not named publicly (to preserve the reviewers' freedom to comment candidly), but reviewers are acknowledged by category and by number in the published versions of the entries they have reviewed.
Researchers and practitioners interested in joining the critical-reader pool — particularly those based in East Africa, active in the specific sectors the Lab studies, or contributing complementary expertise in methodology — are welcome to apply through contact.
Affiliations, disclosures, and conflicts
The Lab maintains transparent public disclosure of its affiliations and potential conflicts. At the time of writing (April 2026):
- The Lab is hosted for administrative purposes through Reef Support B.V.; research outputs are held independently and published under the Lab's own name.
- The founder is concurrently an MSc candidate at TU Delft TPM; the thesis work is a distinct deliverable that will be published through standard academic channels following submission.
- The founder operates MiMaji (
mimaji.co.ke), a commercial water-delivery platform in Nairobi; the separation between MiMaji's commercial operations and the Lab's water-programme research is maintained as documented on the water-programme page. - The Lab does not currently receive funding from any party with a direct commercial stake in the specific outcomes of its active research programmes; should such a funding relationship be proposed in future, it would be disclosed here and on the About page before any agreement took effect.
Further enquiries on affiliations, conflicts, or institutional status — including for grant-funder due diligence — are welcome through contact.