Team:TU Eindhoven/Supervisors

dr. Maarten Merkx

Maarten Merkx (1970) studied chemistry (cum laude) at the Radboud University Nijmegen and did his PhD with Prof. Averill (University of Amsterdam, 1995-1999) studying metalloenzyme catalysis. He was a Human Frontier of Science Program (HFSP) post-doctoral fellow with Prof. Stephen J. Lippard (MIT, Cambridge, USA) studying methane monooxgenases. His current research as an associate professor in the BMT department focuses on the development of protein-based switches, which include fluorescent sensors for intracellular imaging of small molecules, photo-switchable proteins, and protein-based sensors for antibody detection. Another important topic is the engineering of multivalent protein and peptides architectures to generate highly specific capture ligands for molecular imaging and diagnostics. He obtained several prestigious grants, including young investigator grants from the HFSP and the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research (NWO-VIDI, 2006), and more recently an ERC independent researcher starting grant (2011).

dr. ir. Tom de Greef

Tom de Greef was born in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, in 1980 and studied at the University of Eindhoven (TU/e, the Netherlands), where he received his M.Sc. degree in Biomedical Engineering cum laude in 2004. He completed his Ph.D. at the Department of Chemistry at the same university in 2008 with professors E. W. Meijer and R. P. Sijbesma working on novel polymeric materials based on quadruple hydrogen bonding motifs. Subsequently, he moved to the Biomodeling and Bioinformatics group headed by prof. P. A. J. Hilbers at the Department of Biomedical Engineering (TU/e) studying self-assembling systems from a computational perspective and became assistant professor in this department in 2010. In 2013, Tom de Greef was a visiting scholar in the group of Prof. D. Weitz (Harvard) working on protein affinity screening using droplet microfluidics. Current research themes are centered on the engineering of artificial cellular systems (bottom-up synthetic biology) with the aim to rationalize physicochemical design principles of biological systems and to develop novel biotechnological applications. In this multidisciplinary work he combines his fascination for (bio)chemistry, mathematical modeling, microfluidics and complex systems. In 2012 and 2013 he was awarded a VENI and an ECHO-STIP grant respectively by the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research (NWO). He is also core member of the Institute for Complex Molecular Systems (ICMS).

prof. dr. ir. Luc Brunsveld

Luc (Lucas) Brunsveld (1975) received his PhD degree in 2001 under supervision of prof. Bert Meijer at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Topic of the thesis was the self-assembly of designed molecules into helical architectures in water. Subsequently, he moved as a Humboldt fellow to the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiologie, Dortmund, to work on the protein semi-synthesis and evaluation of lipidated Ras GTPases in the group of prof. Herbert Waldmann. From 2003-2004 he worked as a group leader in the medicinal chemistry department of Organon (now Schering-Plough) in Oss, on nuclear receptor medicinal chemistry.

End of 2004 Luc Brunsveld received the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, with which he established his own research group at the MPI of Molecular Physiologie, Dortmund, beginning 2005, working on the combination of supramolecular chemistry with protein biochemistry and cellular biology, generating new approaches to modulate biological processes. In 2006 he in addition became group leader at the Chemical Genomics Centre of the Max Planck Society, Dortmund, working on the chemical biology of nuclear receptors to understand and modulate the nuclear receptor-cofactor interaction, in close collaboration with Bayer-Schering Pharma, Merck-Serono, and Schering-Plough.

In the middle of 2008 Luc Brunsveld received an ERC starting grant and became full professor in chemical biology in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology.

In his research Luc Brunsveld uses chemical biology approaches to study protein-protein interactions. Two general themes are followed: 1) Supramolecular Architectures are being pursued as instruments to modulate protein-protein interactions and 2) the Nuclear Receptor – Cofactor interaction is being investigated as a specific protein-protein interaction with many unsolved questions, possibly amendable via chemical biology.