Professor Wilhelm Huck

Prof. Wilhelm T. S. Huck is Professor of Physical Organic Chemistry. He received his PhD (promoter Prof. David Reinhoudt) in 1997 from the University of Twente. After postdoctoral research with Prof. Whitesides at Harvard University, he took up a position in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, where he was promoted to Reader (2003) and Full Professor of Macromolecular Chemistry (2007). He became Director of the Melville Laboratory for Polymer Synthesis in 2004. In 2010 he moved to the Radboud University Nijmegen and completely changed research direction. His main interest is in understanding how life works at the molecular level and the ultimate goal of his group is to build a synthetic cell. His groupfocuses on the physical organic chemistry of the cell and aims to elucidate, using model systems, the influence of the special nature of the cellular environment on complex reaction networks in cells. Another important area of research is the synthesis and analysis  of complex reaction networks and the incorporation of 'molecular programmes' into synthetic materials. He was elected to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in 2012 and elected to the Royal Society of Chemistry. He has published around 250 papers and supervised ~20 PhD students. For his work in Nijmegen he received an ERC advanced grant (2010), a VICI award (2011), and the Spinoza prize (2016).