Gijsje Koenderink
In November 2019, Gijsje Koenderink (1974) brought the AMOLF research group from Amsterdam to TU Delft. Since then, she has been a full-time professor of Bionanoscience at the Faculty of Applied Sciences. Her career began with an award-winning dissertation in physical chemistry (1998) and two postdocs in Amsterdam and Harvard. She then became head of the Living Matter department and scientific group leader of Biological Soft Matter Physics at NWO-AMOLF, and professor of Biological Soft Matter Physics in Amsterdam.
Koenderink publishes frequently (nine new publications in 2025) and receives many grants and prestigious awards. She also holds a large number of (international) positions. These include: member of the core team of the Fundamentals of Health and Disease Theme within the Convergence Health & Technology Alliance, member of the NWO Round Table Physics, member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the INM-Leibniz Institute of New Materials (Saarbrücken) and editorial board member of Physical Biology. Since 2023, she has also been co-director of the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience and Medical Delta professor at the Erasmus Medical Centre. In 2024, she joined the editorial board of the internationally renowned journal Physical Review X, was appointed a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Institut Jacques Monod in Paris and a fellow of the American Physical Society (D-SOFT division). In 2025, she was awarded a fellowship from EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organisation). She makes her research accessible to a wide audience through TedX and other lectures.
Gijsje Koenderijk is a world-leading expert in the field of cell biophysics. The Koenderink Lab research material properties of cells and tissues. ‘The core of what we do is not creating life, but understanding it,’ says Koenderink.
New input through experimental research
‘Experimental research can bring new input to research, diagnostics and therapy,’ states Koenderink. And that might be the most characteristic of the Koenderink Lab: the experimental approach. The goal is to understand the physical mechanisms that make cells and tissues change form, for example. To do so, concepts and methods from physics and biology are combined, such as biophysics, soft matter physics, synthetic biology, and mechano-biology. Through this, groundbreaking discoveries have been done, and the research can have an impact on the medical and nutrition sector, for example. In 2024, a number of publications by Koenderink (and others) came out which clarified these discoveries step by step.
Research with three aspects
Koenderink's current research focuses on three aspects: cell mechanics, tissue mechanics and the construction of synthetic cells. For example, the research group is developing methods to enable measurements in a single cell. 'In the laboratory, we are developing advanced biophysical measurement techniques.' In 2025, this led to the development of a rheometer that can measure the mechanical properties of individual cells with unprecedented sensitivity. Koenderink: 'Together with biologists and biomedical researchers, we apply these measurement techniques to cells and tissues.' Innovative methods for biochemical reconstruction of a cell's cytoskeleton can be used to investigate how cytoskeletal polymers stimulate cell division and cell migration, for example.
In the field of tissue mechanics, groundbreaking experiments have been conducted in mammals, demonstrating that the mechanical properties of the tissue that holds cells together cause unique physical effects (strain stiffening, plasticity and elastomeric behaviour).
Building synthetic cells
Because of their immense complexity, measurements alone are not sufficient to learn to understand the functions of cells. By making a bottom-up, simplified synthetic cell model with lifeless components, it is easier to see what a cell does. When using a reductionist approach, you have more control over what you add to see what the result is, and what makes a cell change shape, move, and divide. The ultimate ambition is to develop synthetic cells that show life-simulating functions. That is the aim of research consortium BaSyC (Building a Synthetic Cell), which received €19 million from the NWO Gravity programme. Koenderink leads this consortium of researchers from five universities and NWO-AMOLF. It concerns a ten-year research programme (2017-2027) to create an autonomous, self-reproducing synthetic cell through integration of molecular construction blocks. Or, in more simple words: building a synthetic biological cell with lifeless components.
‘Scientists are very consciously working on research which is societally relevant. We should communicate that better.’ And: ‘Research driven by curiosity leads to innovation and impact on a wide range of areas.’ Things said by Gijsje Koenderink in previous interviews. Just like: ‘Fundamentally understanding life in a cell will generate incredible intellectual, scientific and technological benefits.’
Collaborative ties with impact
‘Collaboration is the common thread running through my work. What I do is highly interdisciplinary and takes place at the intersection of physics and biology,’ Koenderink once said. He also added: ‘Research is people work, and if the collaboration is enjoyable, this is an important factor for success.’ Partly thanks to these partnerships, the field of research has been able to develop rapidly and TU Delft has been able to profile itself worldwide as a leading institute in the field of nanobioscience. Koenderink is also co-director of the Delft Kavli Institute of Nanoscience. This institute is one of a series of five leading institutes and is the only one outside the United States. It forms a collective of researchers – from within and outside TU Delft – who all work on a nanoscale. In addition, Koenderink is affiliated with the Erasmus Medical Centre and Leiden University Medical Centre as a Medical Delta professor. This collaboration focuses on cancer research, together with biophysicists and cancer cell biologists. ‘Actively developing research proposals together, with a joint application for funding,’ says Koenderink.
Impact on medical diagnostics
‘I expect that some aspects will have practical applications within a few years,’ says Koenderink about the impact of her research. She specifically refers to the diagnostics and therapy for diseases where cell or tissue mechanisms are disturbed, such as cancer, fibrosis and thrombosis. Many diagnoses are still made on genetic or molecular basis. But the research done by Koenderink Lab can lead to new ways of diagnosing diseases in an early stage, based on measured mechanical differences in tissues or cells. ‘I expect that our method will be very powerful’, Koenderink emphasises. These insights can also be useful to developing new therapies. ‘If we understand how cells decide what to do, we can also measure what goes wrong in a disease,’ so says Koenderink. ‘And knowledge about the material properties of tissues are relevant to cancer research, because tissues can influence the invasion and spread of cancer cells.’ But the research can also have impact outside of medical science. The constantly renewing materials that forms the cytoskeleton of a cell can inspire the development of new synthetic materials. ‘New design principles from nature that are very different from the concepts we use to this date to make advanced materials,’ is what Koenderink calls them.
Koenderink's Personal Passion Pride
'As a research group, we are undergoing a transformation. We are evolving from fundamental research into the mechanics of cells to a better understanding of the role of those mechanics in diseases. For example, we look at metastase, the spread of cancer cells. Or at fibroma, skin tumours in which mechanics are disturbing the tissue and the cell. Or at thrombosis, where blood clots can develop and let go. My dream is that we can connect our fundamental research to this type of problems, which are urgent in society.’
TU Delft offers tremendous ecosystem
The Koenderink Lab, as part of the Bionanoscience department of TU Delft, is made possible through the Excellence Fund. ‘There is a broad spectrum of interdisciplinary research here,’ says Koenderink. ‘Additionally, it is a dynamic infrastructure, in which all kinds of ideas are shared, and collaborative ties develop. TU Delft itself forms an even bigger ecosystem, which provides tremendous richness in collaborative opportunities with other disciplines. Overall, the health and technology partnerships are even broader. In short, my research group enriches TU Delft by sharing our knowledge and through a strong link with biomedical research. The reverse is also true, of course. Our colleagues at TU Delft and the entire ecosystem here share their knowledge with us, thereby enriching our research as well.
Meat coming from TU Delft?
Meatable is an international initiative for research and production of cultured meat. The company has the ambition to produce cultured meat on a large scale, which has the nutritional profile of, looks like, and tastes like traditional meat. But produced without animals, humans or the planet getting harmed. Meatable has collaborative ties with DSM, VIVOLTA (producer of healthcare products) and TU Delft (Gijsje Koenderink and prof. dr. Jean-Marc Daran of Industrial Microbiology). They received €1 million from NWO for a 5-year research programme of microbial production of proteins (ELPs) for biomedical materials and nutrition (vegan meat). These ELPs can support (the repair of) soft tissue. This could help Meatable in developing larger cuts of artificial meat. Within this programme, they conduct a digestability research, among other things.