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Spin-off company
Together with Aquiles Carattino and Nascent Ventures, we recieved a take-off grant for characterization of nanoparticles in solution …
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Summer-in-lab in Oxford
For the past two month, I had the great pleasure of doing experiments with Philipp Kukura’s group at the department of Chemistry in Oxford. This was an opportunity created by the superb hospitality of Philipp and his group members, and me not taking enough vacation days for the previous two years. Spending most of my time in the lab and getting my hands busy with some of the most sensitive optical microscopes in the world was a remarkable experience. I am no stranger to sensitive microscopes, but the iSCAMS technology, with its unique combination of sensitivity and ease of operation, is a real breakthrough. Each week I saw some visiting researchers coming with their samples in ice-boxes and at the end of the day leaving with a smile on their face because of the incredible measurements they could take in a single day. …
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Four undergraduate projects start today
Four new projects related to various aspects of electrokinetic tracking will start today. Lorenzo Peres is going to make a microfluidic channel with embedded electrodes. This channel hopefully allows him to measure surface charge of the channel as function of flow. Peter Speets will also use a similar channel to study growth and shrinkage of protein aggregates using nanoparticle tracking and resonant light scattering. Milo Colaris will use an acoustic levitator to measure the viscosity of a floating droplet of a suspension as it dries. The method he develps will be later applied to very small droplets trapped with an optical tweezers. …
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U-Talent project with a DIY-microscope
Last September, 4 students from the U-Talent program performed their final project in our group. They used a DIY-microscope, previously developed in the bachelor project of Kevin Namink, to measure the Brownian motion of nanoparticles. Their goal was to measure the viscosity of the liquid by determination of the Diffusion constant. De Odysee van een deeltje in een suspensie was presented with remarkable confidence by Lucas Abbenhuis, Evert Sarolea, Samuel Klumpers, and Jip Ridderbos during the final thesis-symposium in an almost full classroom. Here is a shot from the back of the room. …
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Blogging about Voice of UYA Podcasts
I was invited to write blogs on the Utrecht University news site about the podcasts I make for the Utrecht Young Academy. In my first blogpost, Do not take it at the face value, I introduce the third podcast episode with Ron Dotsch. …
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Migrating to GitHub pages
After several years of happily administring my personal pages with the mediawiki software on my old website and less happily paying the ever-increasing hosting fees, I thought of migrating to the github pages. Those payments for hosting fees are much better spent if I donate them to the Wikimedia Foundation, and their exciting recent initiative the wikitribune. …