Speakers Archive

Prof. dr. Jan van Maarseveen

University of Amsterdam

Jan van Maarseveen obtained obtained his Ph.D. in 1994 at the University of Nijmegen on the total synthesis of indole alkaloids. From 1994-1999 he joined Solvay-Pharmaceuticals as a farmacochemist. In november 1999 he moved back to academia and was promoted in 2015 to full professor. His research focusses on the development of methodology to enable the synthesis of small and strained cyclic peptides together with the development of enantioselective catalytic methods with applications in alkaloid synthesis. Currently, the group is fully dedicated to covalent scaffold-based methodology development towards mechanically interlocked molecules. Jan obtained several prices of which the “Teacher of the year of the University of Amsterdam in 2012” award is the most prestiguous one. In 2016 he was awarded the KNCV Van Marum Medal for his contributions to chemistry outreach and excellence in teaching. His second passion is flying, in summertime in gliders and in wintertime powered gliders.

Lasso peptides share an N-terminal macrolactam of 7/9 residues through which the linear exocyclic C-terminal part is threaded and mechanically locked. It has been thoroughly studied that the intriguing lasso-fold that is present in the majority of natural lasso-peptides possesses an exceptional proteolytic and conformational stability. Their fascinating topology, high compactness, stability, and biological activities make them ultimate targets for synthetic methodology development. Although several groups embarked on this subject, the fact that almost twenty years after their structure elucidation no general synthesis has been published yet underscores their complexity. In other words, the 2016 Nobel prize-winning methodologies toward rotaxanes/catenanes that are mainly based on supramolecular mutual positioning of the ring-thread fragments, fall short. I will present to you our recently developed template-based clipping and backfolding concepts and a combination of both that should allow future synthetic access to mechanically interlocked peptides.

Dr. Roxanne Kieltyka

Leiden University

Roxanne Kieltyka was born in Toronto, Canada. She carried out her doctoral thesis in the group of Hanadi Sleiman at McGill University on the development of novel platinum-based complexes for the targeting of G-quadruplexes as an anticancer therapy. She then performed postdoctoral work in the group of at the Eindhoven University of Technology in Eindhoven, The Netherlands on the synthesis of supramolecular polymers for application in the biomedical field. Roxanne is an associate professor within the group at Leiden University. She was named one of the by C&E News and has recently obtained an ERC Starting Grant.

The application of adaptive materials in areas from biomedicine to electronics has invigorated the development of new supramolecular materials with specific function. Their easy processing due to their non-covalent character permits the facile introduction of biomolecules, such as peptides, and their responsiveness to different stimuli is attractive for manifold applications in the biomedical field. To realize their use, there is a need for structurally simple monomers with high synthetic accessibility that can robustly self-assemble into polymeric architectures in the presence of complex molecular cargo. Squaramides, structurally minimal ditopic hydrogen-bonding units, show tremendous potential in this regard due to their ease of synthesis starting from commercially available precursors and ability to be introduced into a variety of monomers. In this talk, I will share our exploration of the squaramide synthon for the construction of supramolecular polymers that can be used for biomedical applications such as drug delivery and 3D cell culture.

Prof. dr. Jos Oomens

Radboud University

Jos Oomens received his PhD from Radboud University in 1996 on a subject in high-resolution molecular spectroscopy. In 1999, he joined the group of Prof. Gerard Meijer at the FOM institute Rijnhuizen (now DIFFER). Here, he started to apply the FELIX laser to obtain IR spectra of gaseous molecular ions in an ion trap mass spectrometer. Initial studies focused on the spectral fingerprints of ionized polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), hypothesized as constituents of interstellar clouds. Together with US researchers, he developed an FTICR high-resolution mass spectrometer for infrared ion spectroscopy, which was employed in ion chemistry studies aimed at resolving molecular structures for ionized molecules and complexes. In 2011, he received an NWO VICI grant that enabled him to build a new ion spectroscopy platform with analytical sensitivity at the FELIX lab that moved to Radboud University in 2013. Here he started to develop analytical application of ion spectroscopy for molecular structure identification, collaborating e.g. with researchers from the Radboudumc.

Mass spectrometry (MS) is one of the cornerstones of analytical chemistry, especially in the analysis of complex mixtures: samples that contain thousands of molecular components in varying concentrations. Both sensitivity and resolving power of MS are unparalleled by other analytical methods. However, determination of molecular structures on the basis of MS data is challenging, as a single molecular weight value may correspond to many structural isomers.

I will show how MS can be integrated with infrared (IR) spectroscopy, so that IR spectra can be recorded for individual, mass-selectively isolated components in a complex mixture. [1]. In contrast to a mass spectrum, an IR spectrum provides diagnostic vibrational frequencies from which the molecular structure can be deciphered. Interestingly, reconstructing the molecular structure from the vibrational spectrum can be achieved through computationally predicted IR spectra, opening avenues towards reference standard-free molecular structure identification. A prominent example that I will showcase involves biomarker discovery for inborn errors of metabolism. [2,3]

Dr. Klaas Giesbertz

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Klaas Giesbertz is an assistent professor in the Theoretical Chemistry group at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU). He did the bachelor physics and the topmaster nano science at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. In 2010 he obtained his PhD cum laude at the VU under supervision of Evert-Jan Baerends and Oleg Gritsenko with the thesis titled “Time-dependent one-body reduced density matrix functional theory”. After a two-year postdoc at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland) in the group of Robert van Leeuwen, he returned to the VU on a VENI grant to continu his work on one-body reduced density matrix (1RDM) functional theory. His research group focusses on improving 1RDM functional theory and other electronic structure methods at the level of mathematical foundations, practical approximations and implementation.

Molecular orbital (MO) theory is a very important tool in chemistry to rationalise chemical reactions and the response to external perturbations like catalysts, substituents and irradiation. There is not a single MO theory, since there are different ways how to construct the orbitals. In his lecture, Klaas Giesbertz will explain the essence of the two most prominent versions of MO theory: Hartree–Fock (HF) and density functional theory (DFT). He will explain how both MO theories fail to describe the breaking of chemical bonds in practice and how their performance can be improved.

Dr. Danny Broere

Utrecht University

Danny Broere is a tenure track assistant professor in the Organic Chemistry & Catalysis group at Utrecht University (UU). He studied chemistry at the Hogeschool Utrecht (HU) and the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam. In 2016 he obtained his PhD cum laude under supervision of Jarl Ivar van der Vlugt and Joost Reek, working on redox-active ligands. After his PhD, Danny worked as a NWO Rubicon Postdoctoral fellow in the group of Patrick Holland at Yale University on a NWO Rubicon fellowship. In September 2018, Danny started his independent research program at UU. He finds his inspiration for his research in the elegant multimetallic architectures that natural metalloenzymes use to catalyze challenging chemical transformations. His research group focusses on obtaining fundamental understanding of how multiple metals can work together to activate strong chemical bonds, and use this knowledge to develop multinuclear homogeneous catalysts for reactions of relevance to the energy transition.

His lecture will revolve around the question: “Are Two Better than One?”. In search for an answer Danny will discuss how nature exploits cofactors containing multiple metal atoms in close proximity to catalytically make and break chemical bonds. Subsequently, he will take a deep dive into the synthetic systems developed in his group and how these display distinct stoichiometric and catalytic reactivity from their mononuclear counterparts. 

Prof. dr. Mario van der Stelt

Leiden University

Mario van der Stelt received his Ph.D (cum laude) in chemistry from Utrecht University in 2002. He was a project-leader of multidisciplinary drug discovery teams in Merck Research Laboratories (Oss). In 2012 he moved to Leiden University and founded the department of Molecular Physiology. He became a full professor in Molecular Physiology in 2017. His research interests are focused on lipid and kinase signaling in cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. His vision is to work in multidisciplinary teams to design, synthesize and apply chemical tools and concepts to understand biology with the ultimate goal to improve human health. Key to his research is the development and integration of chemical biology and computational techniques to predict and profile drug-target interactions. In 2019, he was selected as a principal investigator of Oncode Institute. He has co-authored >115 papers and patents and won several (inter)national prizes, including Prix Galien Research and a VICI-award from NWO.

Lipid transmitters, such as endocannabinoids and eicosanoids, play important roles in the central nervous system and regulate physiological processes in health and disease that include pain, emotion, addiction and neuroinflammation. Chemical probes that perturb lipid transmitter biosynthesis and metabolism are needed to understand the function of these pathways in the brain. Here, I will present our work on the development of chemical probes to study endocannabinoid biology. I will discuss how chemical proteomics can be used to guide the development of selective probes and how they can be used in the various stages of drug discovery. [1-3]:

[1] Mock et al. J. Med. Chem., 2021, 64, 481
[2] Mock et al. Nature Chemical Biology, 2020, 16, 667
[3] Van Esbroeck et al., Science, 2017, 356 1084

Prof. dr. Luis Liz-Marzan

Center for Cooperative Research in Biomaterials, CIC biomaGUNE

Luis Liz-Marzán is Ikerbasque Professor at the Center for Cooperative Research in Biomaterials, CIC biomaGUNE, in San Sebastián (Spain), where he also served as the Scientific Director from 2012 to 2021. He graduated in Chemistry from the University of Santiago de Compostela, was postdoc at the Van ‘t Hoff Laboratory at Utrecht University (1003-1995) and Professor at the University of Vigo (1995–2012), as well as visiting professor at various research institutions worldwide. Liz-Marzán is co-author of over 500 publications and 9 patents, and advisor of 35 PhD students and 60 postdocs, many of them currently holding academic positions. He has also held various editorial positions, currently as an Executive Editor of ACS Nano. Liz-Marzán’s research focuses on the colloidal synthesis and self-assembly of metal nanocrystals, as well as the characterization and application of their plasmonic properties. More recently, he focused on the biomedical applications of plasmonic nanostructures.

Noble metal nanoparticles display unique optical properties, related to localized surface plasmon resonances (collective oscillations of conduction electrons), which give rise to well-defined absorption and scattering peaks in the visible and near-IR spectral range. Such resonances can be tuned through the size and shape of the nanoparticles, and are highly sensitive towards dielectric changes around the particles and to their specific organization within assemblies. Therefore, metal nanoparticles have been proposed as ideal candidates for biosensing and bioimaging applications.

This presentation will focus on the application of colloid chemistry to the synthesis of metal nanoparticles, where surfactants play a crucial role for the definition of the final, nanoscale morphology. As a result, a variety of optical/plasmonic phenomena can be optimized, with a wide range of potential applications.

Prof. dr. M. Stanley Whittingham

Binghamton University

Stanley Whittingham is a SUNY distinguished professor of chemistry and materials science and engineering at Binghamton and the 2019 Chemistry Nobel Laureate. He received his BA and D Phil degrees in chemistry from Oxford University, where he is an honorary Fellow of New College. He has been active in Li-batteries since 1971 when he won the Young Author Award of the Electrochemical Society for his work on beta-alumina. In 1972, he joined Exxon and discovered the role of intercalation in battery reactions, which resulted in the first commercial lithium rechargeable batteries that were built by Exxon Enterprises. In 1988 he returned to academia at SUNY Binghamton to initiate a program in materials chemistry. In 2018 he was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering and received the Turnbull Award from MRS. He is a Fellow of the Materials Research Society.

His lecture will be about the lithium-ion batteries and their role in enabling the large-scale introduction of renewable energy. Talking about the opportunities and technical challenges which will need to be overcome to further advance the technology.

Prof. dr. Anouk M. Rijs

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Anouk Rijs is full professor of Analytics of Biomolecular Interactions in the BioAnalytical Chemistry Division at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She is an expert on IR action spectroscopy combined with mass spectrometry for structural characterization of biomolecules such as peptides, proteins and carbohydrates. Recently, she was awarded an NWO-VICI grant by which she aims to unravel and ultimately control the protein aggregation mechanism of neurodegenerative diseases using mass spectrometry hyphenated with IR spectroscopy and ion mobility.

Moreover, in collaboration with the Amsterdam University Medical Center and the University of Manchester, she works on the identification of biomarkers for Parkinson’s Disease. In addition, she is a board-member of the NWO Fundamentals and Methods in Chemistry research community, physics board-member at the Lorentz Center, member of the advisory board of Analysis and Sensing (Chemistry Europe, Wiley) and Deputy Chair of the journal “Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics” (PCCP) of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Her lecture will deal the analysation of peptide and protein aggregation, the process where soluble functioning proteins turn into insoluble amyloid aggregates. The unavoidble build-up of these aggregates is directly linked to age-related, neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Currently there is not much known about the early-steps of this process, as there are no analytical methods which allows us to probe the aggregation process. Therefore, the use of IR spectroscopy as possible structural probe in mass spectrometry will be discussed. Combined with other methods, the aim is to elucidate and visualize the early stages of aggregating peptides, and ultimately direct their self-assembly process.

Prof. dr. Sylvestre A. Bonnet

Universiteit Leiden

Sylvestre Bonnet is Full Professor in Bioinorganic Chemistry at Leiden University. He obtained his PhD in 2005 at the University of Strasbourg, France, in the group of Nobel Laureate Jean-Pierre Sauvage. He then moved to The Netherlands as a postdoc, where he successively worked in the groups of Gerard van Koten (Utrecht), Jan Reedijk (Leiden), and Antoinette Killian and Bert Klein Gebbink (Utrecht). Between 2009 and 2014 he completed a Tenure Track position in Inorganic Chemistry at Leiden University, where he was tenured in 2015 and became full professor in 2020. He obtained several prestigious grants, including a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (2013), and three young investigator grants (VENI 2008, VIDI 2012, VICI 2019) from the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Since 2015 he is Fellow of the Young Academy of Europe, and in 2017 he became YAE Board Member. His expertise lies at the crossing point between bioinorganic chemistry, photochemistry, and lipid membranes. His current research interests are anticancer photoactivated chemotherapy, supramolecular photocatalysis, and upconversion.

Traditionally, photochemists prepare new molecules to study their photochemical properties, just because they like it. However, when photoactive molecules are meant for phototherapeutic purposes, it becomes very relevant for a chemist to also ask oneself in which biological model these molecules should be tested, and for which disease exactly these molecules should be tested. His lecture will deal with his journey as a photochemist in the world of anticancer phototherapy and how this journey has pushed him to develop his knowledge way beyond chemistry, towards biology, cancer models, and oncology. He will first describe the photochemistry of the compounds developed in my group, then discuss the different in vitro cancer models they have used to test them, and finally their efforts to show activity in vivo, as the first steps towards clinical trials.

Prof. dr. Sason Shaik

University of Jeruzalem

Sason Shaik is a Saerree K. and Louis P. Fiedler Professor of Chemistry at the Hebrew University, whose main interests are in bonding, chemical reactivity, metalloenzymes, oxidation and reduction by transition metal complexes, and electric field effects in chemistry. Alongside a variety of computational tools, he uses valence bond theory as a conceptual frame. He developed a general Valence Bond model for chemical reactivity, showed the existence of new bonding motifs, and elucidated structure, mechanism and dynamics in Cytochrome P450 and nonheme enzymes. His main recent awards are the Schrödinger Medal (WATOC 2007); the August-Wilhelm-von-Hofmann-Medal (the German Chemical Society, 2012); Membership in the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science (2015); and the three medals awarded by the Israel Chemical Society, including the Gold Medal (2017), which is the highest award of the society. Occasionally, he writes poetry and essays on a variety of topics.

Prof. dr. Tom Grossman

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Tom Grossmann studied chemistry at the Humboldt University Berlin (Germany), including undergraduate research with Peter Vollhardt at the University of California Berkeley (USA). In 2008, he received his PhD with Oliver Seitz at the Humboldt University Berlin. After postdoctoral research in the group of Gregory Verdine at Harvard University (USA), he became group leader at the Technical University and the Chemical Genomics Centre in Dortmund (Germany). Since 2016, he is full professor at the VU University Amsterdam, currently being supported by an ERC Starting Grant.

Dr. Laura Filion

Utrecht University

Laura Filion has a masters in physics from McMaster University, Canada, and a PhD from Utrecht University, Netherlands. After working as a post-doc at Cambridge University, UK, she moved back to Utrecht University, where she currently works as an assistant professor in soft condensed matter. Her research focuses on using classical statistical physics and computer simulations to examine the self-assembly of colloidal particles, both in and out of equilibrium. In particular, she has explored a range of entropy-driven phase transitions, developed new methods to predict crystal structures, examined the nucleation of crystalline phases, explored crystal defects in colloidal crystals, and studied motility-induced phase separation in active particles. Recently, she has started to explore how machine learning techniques can aid in the study of soft matter systems.

Dr. Eelco Ruijter

Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Eelco Ruijter (1977) studied Chemistry at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam and continued as a PhD student with Prof. Wessjohann at the VU and the Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry (Halle/Saale, Germany), obtaining his PhD in 2005. By then, he had joined the Liskamp group at Utrecht University (the Netherlands) as a postdoctoral fellow working on chemistry-based proteomics. In December 2006, he returned to the VU Amsterdam as a tenure track Assistant Professor of Organic Chemistry. He obtained tenure in 2012 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2018. His research interests include the development of new synthetic strategies towards complex molecules of high biological relevance making use of cascade processes and asymmetric catalysis. He is author of nearly 100 publications in international, peer-reviewed scientific journals and five book chapters, editor of two volumes in a book series, and co-inventor of four patents.

Dr. Mike Preuss

Leiden University

Mike received his PhD in 2013 from the Chair of Algorithm Engineering at TU Dortmund, Germany, and was with ERCIS at the WWU Muenster, Germany, from 2013 to 2018. His research interests focus on the field of evolutionary algorithms for real-valued problems, namely on multi-modal and multi-objective optimization, and on computational intelligence and machine learning methods for computer games. Recently, he is also involved in Social Media Computing, and he is publications chair of the upcoming multi-disciplinary MISDOOM conference 2019. He is associate editor of the IEEE ToG journal and has been member of the organizational team of several conferences in the last years, and notably is general (co-)chair of the PPSN 2020 conference in Leiden.

Prof.dr.ir. Hans-Gerd Janssen

Unilever

Prof.dr.ir. Hans-Gerd Janssen obtained his MSc and PhD degree from the Eindhoven University of Technology. After obtaining his PhD degree he joined the Eindhoven University as an associate professor. In 1999 he moved to Unilever where he became the science leader for chromatography and mass spectrometry. From 2004 he was part-time professor at the University of Amsterdam. Since 2019 he holds a special chair on ‘recognition-based analytical chemistry’ at Wageningen University.

Prof. Janssen’s research interests include the development of novel separation systems for the analysis of complex samples. Fighting food waste with miniaturized and automated instrumentation has his special interest. Prof. Janssen has published more than 200 papers including two patents and eleven book chapters. His passion is to apply novel developments from surrounding fields to develop new analytical methods and techniques that ultimately allow us to solve analytical issues we were not able to solve before.

The talk will be about developing simple analytical devices that can help the consumer, at home, in the kitchen, to assess food freshness. Simple chromatographic separation system exploiting purpose-functionalized selective surfaces are used to detect marker compounds for food aging. These include hexanal for aged edible oils, or putrescine and cadaverine to detect spoiled meat.