On February 1^st, Christophe Danelon (Delft/BN) took over the scientific director of the Casimir Research School from Tjerk Oosterkamp (LION). In the below, the new director briefly introduces himself.

"For those who don’t know me, I’m an associate professor at the Bionanoscience department. My group is engaged in the long-term effort to construct a minimal cell using a bottom-up approach. Next to this, we are trying to exploit the potential of genetically controlled liposome bioreactors as therapeutic nanofactories for targeted drug delivery purposes. Our lab is also interested in developing RNA protocell models based on fatty acid vesicles and catalytic RNAs called ribozymes. For more information on our research, please check our website.

Building upon my predecessors at Casimir, and together with the team (board, education committee, PhD platform, pre-PhD track coordinator and the Casimir coordinator), I will try to focus on the following actions:

• maintain the dynamic connections between Delft and Leiden,
• ensure sustainable funding (beyond NanoFront) for all Casimir operations, in particular for PhD positions allocated to the top Casimir MSc-track students,
• scale up the number of excellent (international) PhD applicants, in general grow the international visibility of the research school."

The Casimir Board and Christophe Danelon would like to thank Tjerk Oosterkamp for his efforts for our community over the past years.