The Executive Board has appointed Professor Marileen Dogterom as interim Dean of the Faculty of Applied Sciences (AS) with effect from 1 January 2021. She will temporarily succeed Professor Lucas van Vliet, who will become Dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS) with effect from that date.                

Marileen Dogterom became well known for her biophysical research into the cytoskeleton (the ‘bones’) of cells. She heads the national BaSyC consortium (Building a Synthetic Cell) , the partnership of Dutch research groups that aims to make synthetic cells. She is also one of the initiators of the European Synthetic Cell Initiative.

Dogterom studied physics at Groningen University and specialised in biophysics during her PhD research at Paris-Sud and Princeton University. Subsequently, she worked as a researchers at Bell Labs in New Jersey. She was associated with NWO Institute AMOLF for seventeen years, until she came to Delft in 2014.                                                                                                                   

Dogterom is frequently honoured for her work. In 2013, she was elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). In 2015 she received the Physica Prize of the Netherlands Physical Society. She has been a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) since 2016 and in 2017 she joined the board, where she has been vice-president since June this year. In 2018 she was awarded the Spinoza Prize, the highest scientific award in the Netherlands.

In the coming period Dogterom will combine the interim deanship with her many scientific and administrative roles. The search for a permanent successor to Lucas van Vliet is now in full swing.