Professor Jan C. M. VAN HEST

Jan van Hest obtained his PhD from Eindhoven University of Technology in 1996 in macro-organic chemistry with prof E.W. Meijer. He worked as a postdoc with prof D.A. Tirrell on protein engineering. In 1997 he joined the chemical company DSM in the Netherlands. In 2000 he was appointed full professor in Bio-organic chemistry at Radboud University Nijmegen. As of September 2016 he holds the chair of Bio-organic Chemistry at Eindhoven University of Technology. The group’s focus is to develop well-defined compartments for nanomedicine and artificial cell research. Using a combination of techniques from polymer science to protein engineering, well-defined carriers and scaffolds are developed for application in e.g. cancer treatment, immunology and ophthalmology.

Van Hest was elected member of the “Jonge Akademie”, (The Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) in 2005. He has won a TOP grant (2007) and a VICI grant (2010), the highest personal career grant obtainable through open competition in the Netherlands.  In 2012 he was one of the main applicants of the 10-year gravitation program on functional molecular systems (26.9 M€, with the universities of Eindhoven, Groningen and Nijmegen).  In 2016 he was awarded an ERC Advanced grant, and currently also coordinates the Horizon 2020 ITN Network Nanomed, dedicated to developing smart delivery carriers in medicine.  Van Hest is associate editor of Bioconjugate Chemistry. He is furthermore an advisory board member of Macromolecular Bioscience, Biomacromolecules, Journal of Materials Chemistry, Chemical Science and ACS Central Science. He has been elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry of the UK.