SynCell-nExUs Supervisors

”I am a PI at TU Delft, where I lead the Laan Lab. As a physicist working at the interface of biology and physics, I use quantitative live-cell microscopy, experimental evolution, bottom-up synthetic biology, and theoretical modeling to uncover how living cells work and evolve. My work centers on cell polarity, a powerful model for understanding how collections of molecules generate robust yet adaptable cellular behavior. Inspired by both physics and philosophy, I am driven by fundamental questions about how life emerges from molecular interactions and how biological systems combine robustness, adaptability, and evolvability.”

”Our goal is to build increasingly autonomous synthetic cells by integrating cell polarity machinery, membrane-based sensing, and GTP-producing metabolic pathways in giant unilamellar vesicles. By coupling protein self-organization to environmental cues and energy availability, we aim to create synthetic cells that dynamically adapt their internal organization to changing conditions. We are further engineering communication pathways that allow synthetic cells to sense and respond to one another, enabling collective behaviors and the emergence of synthetic tissues. These bottom-up systems provide a powerful platform to investigate how molecular interactions generate robust, adaptive, and life-like behavior.”

For more information, visit the Laanlab page.