Cees Dekker

Cees Dekker is Distinguished University Professor at TU Delft. Trained as a physicist, he pioneered nanotechnology with many discoveries on carbon nanotubes in the 1990s. Since 2000, he moved to single-molecule biophysics and nanobiology.

Dekker is an elected member of the KNAW and fellow to the APS and the IOP. He was Director of the prestigious Kavli Institute of Nanoscience Delft, initiated an entirely new Department of Bionanoscience at Delft, and he received an honorary doctorate and many prizes such as the 2001 Agilent Europhysics Prize, 2003 Spinoza award, 2012 ISNSCE Nanoscience Prize, 2021 Nano Research Award, and the 2024 Tel Aviv University International Prize in Biophysics. Dekker was knighted as Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion, and received ERC Advanced/Syngery Grants in 2009, 2015, 2020, 2025. Dekker published over 400 papers that got cited almost 100.000 times (H-index 136).

His current research focuses on (i) nanopores for single-molecule protein sequencing; (ii) chromosome structure, in particular SMC motor proteins, where his lab enforced a breakthrough by demonstrating that SMC proteins extrude loops of DNA; and (iii) building a living synthetic cell from lifeless molecules. On the latter subject, he initiated efforts for a bottom up assembly of a synthetic cell already 2 decades ago, while he currently leads the large (45M€) Dutch consortium EVOLF.