I am the group leader of the The Sensor Engineering department which is part of the Faculty of Science and Engineering of Maastricht University. Our group aims at connecting fundamental and applied research to create innovative sensor solutions for application in diverse fields ranging from medical diagnostics to the food industry.The vision of the department is to create a multidisciplinary research programme that combines aspects of life sciences with chemistry and engineering. The research is focused on studying the fundamental principles of innovative chemo- and biosensor technologies and creating synergies between academia and the industry to analyse the market potential of the developed sensor platforms.

As a member of the Maastricht Science Programme I contribute to the development of smart devices for diagnostic purposes. My specialties lie in the development of read-out strategies for the detection of binding events. Besides a pure academic interest in this area I also hope to participate in ´science for society.` It is my ultimate goal that our work will reach further than academic publications, and will truly enhance diagnostics.

In 2012 we discovered that the heat-transfer resistance at interfaces can be employed as a novel, denaturation-based method to detect single-nucleotide polymorphisms in DNA. We observed that a molecular brush of double-stranded DNA grafted onto synthetic-diamond surfaces does not notably affect the heat-transfer resistance at the solid-to-liquid interface. In contrast to this, molecular brushes of single stranded DNA cause, surprisingly, a substantially higher heat-transfer resistance and behave like a thermally insulating layer. This effect can be utilized to identify ds-DNA melting temperatures via the switching from low- to high heat-transfer resistance. The melting temperatures identified with this method for different DNA duplexes (29 base pairs without and with built-in mutations) correlate nicely with data calculated by modelling. The method is fast, label-free (without the need for fluorescent or radioactive markers), allows for repetitive measurements, and can also be extended towards array formats. Reference measurements by confocal fluorescence microscopy and impedance spectroscopy confirm that the switching of heat-transfer resistance upon denaturation is, indeed, related to the thermal on-chip denaturation of DNA.

Before I started my PhD I was employed by TNO in the department of Health and Sports. I was appointed as engineer and enrolled in the development of wearable sensor systems. Ispecialized in measurements of biopotentials and the development of dry electrodes. I really enjoyed working here and was even nominated for the TNO researcher of the year award. Nevertheless it was my decision to discontinue this job. I wanted to prove to myself that I could fulfill a PhD successfully.