Rens studied Earth Sciences at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. For his MSc thesis, he developed a shallow seismic velocity model for the Groningen area using passive seismic interferometry. Subsequently, as a research internship at the geophysical observatory of the LMU in Munich, he worked on a method to monitor continuous deformation of the crust based on ambient seismic noise correlations. In November 2017, he joined the geophysics group at the FU Berlin as a doctoral candidate. His research will focus on microseismicity in the South Eastern Alps using a dense seismic network (Swath-D), which is part of the AlpArray initiative.