Ernst van Nierop is a Director of Strategy at Sila. In this role he leads Strategy Development & Planning, supported by market research and competitive intelligence. Prior to Sila, Ernst was VP of Scaling at GitLab where he built teams and organizational processes to help the company scale rapidly and globally. Ernst has also held the roles of Process Engineer with Akzo Nobel and VP of Engineering at C12 Energy. Ernst has a MSc degree in Applied Physics from the University of Twente, and a Ph.D. in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University.