Nynke Dekker PhD

Nynke Dekker has been a Full Professor (chair of “Single-molecule nanoscale biophysics”) in the Faculty of Applied Science since 2008. She graduated with a BSc cum Laude from Yale (with majors in both physics and in applied mathematics), an MSc cum laude in physics from Leiden University, and a prestigious Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University. This was followed by a postdoctoral period at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris in which she transitioned into biological physics. She then became faculty at TU Delft, where she rapidly rose from Assistant Professor to Full Professor.

Prof. Dekker has contributed seminal advances at the top of her field of biological physics. Her research focuses on fundamental biological topics such as transcription, replication, and topology that have also a strong link to biomedical research. In order to understand these critical biological processes, she quantitatively probes the dynamics of single molecules of DNA, enzymes, and molecular motors, thus generating a precise and mechanistic biophysical perspective. Her successful research efforts have included real-time studies of processive molecular motors (e.g. polymerases) on DNA and RNA, experiments that probe the mechanisms of DNA-binding proteins involved in DNA compaction (e.g. nucleosomes, tetrasomy), and the termination of replication, and ground-breaking experiments on the understanding of chemotherapeutic inhibitors in clinical use, thus uncovering a new mechanism through which they influence the activity of topoisomerase enzymes. Her research at the single-molecule level was also extended to the context of live bacterial cells, which places her research group in the unique position of being able to quantitatively compare the behavior of individual biological molecules both in vitro and in vivo.