Bacteria, fungi and plants produce large numbers of small molecules, which mediate key interactions between these organisms at the molecular level, and are responsible for many important microbiome-associated phenotypes. Many of these molecules are also applied as antibiotics, chemotherapeutics, and crop protection agents. My research group develops and applies computational tools to study the functional diversity of such molecules based on large-scale (meta)genomic, transcriptomic and metabolomic data.
A paper summarizing the mission and vision of my research group was recently published in mSystems, and can be found here.
The applied sciences division (TTW) of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) decided to grant our proposal for a research consortium to work on genome-based discovery of novel lipopeptide antibiotics.
I look forward to coordinating this consortium, which also involves Leiden University (Gilles van Wezel, Nathaniel Martin), Fundacion Medina and BioVersys AG."
My research received considerable media attention this month.
Elsevier Magazine and the newspaper NRC Handelsblad both highlighted my research."
The science magazine New Scientist selected me as one of the 25 nominees for scientific talent of the year across all sciences in The Netherlands and Belgium.
You can vote for me here."
I received the happy news that I got awarded a Veni grant by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
The title of the project is "A systematic computational genomic analysis of plant secondary metabolic pathways."
After four years of hard work, my PhD thesis is finished and has been printed.
The title of the thesis is "Medicines from Microbes: exploiting the power of computational genomics for natural products discovery and engineering."
The defence will take place on September 27th, at 11:00 AM in the Academiegebouw of the University of Groningen.
Recently, the communication office of the University of Groningen made a nice movie about my research, on the occasion of winning the Rubicon award from NWO.