Marileen Dogterom

Marileen Dogterom (born 20 November 1967, in Utrecht) is a Dutch biophysicist and professor at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at Delft University of Technology. She is notable for her research of the cell cytoskeleton. She was awarded the 2018 Spinoza Prize for her research.

Life and career Dogterom was born 20 November 1967 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. In 1990, she earned a degree in theoretical physics from the University of Groningen. Though she found a PhD position at the University of Paris-Sud, she followed her mentor (Stanislas Leibler) to Princeton University, where Dogterom began to work with biological systems via a collaboration with their biology faculty. In 1994, she graduated cum laude with a doctorate from the University of Paris-Sud, and worked as a postdoc at Bell Labs in the United States. In 1997, she became a project leader at FOM Institute AMOLF, a physics and biophysics research institute, becoming head of department from 2003 to 2013. and become a full professor in 2010.

Dogterom currently leads a team that aims to build the first artificial cell. In her laboratory, her team studies and builds parts of the cytoskeleton outside of the cell, where they can measure the forces they exert on various other cell components. The team also analyses the effects of various forces on the deformation of the cytoskeleton, the interactions of the cytoskeleton polymers as a network, and the spatial structure of the cell itself. Her research group plans to collaborate with various other research groups that focus on other parts of the cell. and she has been its president since 2022.

Awards In 2013, Dogterom was elected to the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), and in 2015, she was elected to the Academia Europaea. Dogterom has been awarded the following grants, fellowships, and prizes: 2018 – Spinoza Prize 2017 - Engineering and Physical Sciences Suffrage Science award 2015 – Dutch Physical Prize (Yearly Award from the Dutch Physical Society) 2013 – ERC Synergy grant (with Anna Akhmanova at Utrecht University) 2007 – VICI Award, NWO Vernieuwingsimpuls 1992 – Fulbright Fellowship, The Netherlands 1991 – EMBO Short Term Fellowship (Heidelberg, Germany) 1988 – Fellowship from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Rome, Italy)