J.C.M. Van Hest

Jan. C. M. van Hest conducted his doctoral research on molecular architectures based on dendrimers at Eindhoven University of Technology under supervision of Prof. Bert Meijer, for which the Ph.D. title was granted in 1996. For this research he was awarded the first prize of the DSM science and technology award (1996) and the SNS bank award of best PhD thesis in the category Technical Fundamental Research of the academic year 1995-1996 of Eindhoven University of Technology.

As a postdoctoral researcher he investigated the possibilities of protein engineering for the preparation of materials under supervision of Prof. David Tirrell, at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. In 1997 he joined DSM, where he worked as research scientist and later on as group leader on the development of innovative material concepts. In 2000 he was appointed as a full professor at the Radboud University Nijmegen to set up a new group in bio-organic chemistry. As of September 2016, he is the Bio-organic chemistry chair at Eindhoven University of Technology in both the departments of Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering and Chemistry. His current research efforts are aimed at developing bio-inspired materials and processes in order to combine the functionality of biological systems with the flexibility and robustness of synthetic structures. In particular, he is focused on novel compartmentalization strategies that can be used to construct cell-like systems, or be applied in the field of nanomedicine. Jan van Hest was a member of The Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences from 2005-2010 and vice dean of research of the Faculty of Science (2006-2010). In 2010 he was awarded a VICI grant for his research on artificial organelles, and in 2015 he obtained an ERC Advanced grant on artificial endosymbiosis. He is a member of the CW/PPS board (advisory board on public private collaborations in the field of chemistry) and initiated the national programs Process on a Chip which involves microreactor technology. He is an associate editor of Bioconjugate Chemistry, and advisory board member of the Journal of Materials Chemistry, Biomacromolecules, Macromolecular Bioscience, Central Science and Chemical Science. He has published around 250 papers and 16 patents.