Halfway through his occupation, Cees Dekker reinvented himself. After several years of hardcore physics, he shifted his focus to ‘nanobiology’ with the turn on the millennium. A term he coined himself, like a make any difference of truth.

Our team scientific tests bacterial cell division and it is aiming to represent a ‘base up biology’ in synthetic cells that can autonomously divide. Our most important fascination lies in cell division, chromatin structure, and spatial control.

[Laughs] ‘It absolutely was definitely a great risk! At some time, I had been very well informed that it could go Mistaken and that I could turn out to be much less successful, but I just disregarded that. Curiosity has generally been my strongest driving pressure. And fortuitously it all labored out.’

A rhythmically pulsing leaf-spring DNA-origami nanoengine that drives a passive follower Mathias Centola

This yielded a breakthrough. Within just just a few months, we were in the position to measure transportation via somebody single-walled carbon nanotube. Dependant on minimal-temperature experiments by a superb PhD pupil in my team, Sander Tans (now a valued colleague and professor at Delft University of Know-how with the Lively study lab at AMOLF in Amsterdam), we confirmed that carbon nanotubes were authentic quantum wires with extremely very long (micrometres) Digital coherence lengths — confirming theoretical predictions of metallic behaviour.

Microbiology has only existed for just a century, since we started to research micro-organisms a lot more significantly. I believed nanobiology was an ideal expression, for the reason that all molecular Organic applicable interactions occur within the nanoscale: a protein is a few nanometres in size, DNA is two nm thick.’

Length Charge of person carbon nanotubes by nanostructuring While using the scanning tunneling microscope

He also located time to put in writing a number of publications, send out Pretty much forty thousand tweets and guide A prosperous study group at Delft University of Technological innovation. ‘It doesn’t sense like do the job’, he says. ‘I’m just terribly curious.’

In 1993, like a younger and keen affiliate professor at Delft University of Technological innovation, I'd initially targeted the investigation endeavours of my team on measuring the electrical conductance of a single conducting-polymer molecule. Within just two decades, we had developed a device where only one wire of a phthalocyaninepolysiloxane polymer was connected among two carefully spaced steel nanoelectrodes.

But carbon nanotubes have remained a research topic of considerable desire to quite a few. In fact, the outlook on working with carbon nanotubes to develop functional units, in places like radio-frequency electronics, digital electronics and versatile electronics, stays brilliant.

Instance (four) of bending configurations in 3D simulations of DNA rods on nanopores. A percentage of the membrane is proven in grey, the rim of the pore is highlighted in pink, and also a 3D rendering on the motion of the DNA rod is exhibited.

Cees Dekker is Distinguished College Professor at TU Delft. Properly trained to be a physicist, he pioneered nanotechnology with numerous discoveries on carbon nanotubes from the nineteen nineties. Due to the fact ceesdekker 2000, he moved to one-molecule biophysics and nanobiology. His recent analysis concentrates on (i) nanopores for protein sequencing; (ii) chromosome construction, specifically SMC motor protein; and (iii) building a living synthetic mobile from lifeless molecules. Dekker is undoubtedly an elected member of the KNAW and fellow into the APS as well as IOP.

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Dekker heeft fundamentele ontdekkingen gedaan op het gebied van koolstof nanobuisjes. Mede vanwege deze werkzaamheden is hij al jaren de meest geciteerde fysicus in Nederland. Tegenwoordig onderzoekt hij fulfilled enkel-molecuultechnieken de biofysica van moleculen in de biologische cel. Dekker is naast zijn wetenschappelijk werk ook bekend vanwege zijn belangstelling voor de relatie tussen geloof en wetenschap en de discussie rond clever style in 2005. (nl)