Jan graduated at Eindhoven University in the field of applied physics in 1996. He obtained his PhD degree in 2001 in the group ETP (now PMP) of Professor Daniel C. Schram on the basis of a numerical study of thermal plasma light sources with the help of Plasimo. This study was supervised by Dr Joost van der Mullen. His thesis is titled 'Modelling of Plasma Light Sources - an object-oriented approach'.

After working as a PostDoc in the group EPG of Professor Gerrit Kroesen at Eindhoven University of Technology and staying in the group of Professor Mark Kushner at the University of Illinois, he spent one year in Japan to work in the group of Professor Makabe at Keio University in Tokyo/Yokohama. There he familiarised himself with a number of concepts in the modelling of non-thermal plasma sources.

In December 2003 Jan came back to the group EPG to work on microwave plasma sources which are used in the production of optical fibres. At the end of that month he obtained a Dutch VENI grant which allowed him to work for three years on the modelling of non-thermal bio-medical plasma sources. Since July 2017 he is employed in the group EPG as Associate Professor.

His fields of interest include modelling of electro-magnetic fields and transport phenomena. In addition he studies object-oriented code design and tries to use modern C++ idiom like expression templates for solving coupled linearized systems of equations.