Paul van der Schoot

Paul van der Schoot is a soft matter theorist in the research group Soft Matter and Biological Physics. He is working on the boundary between physics, chemistry, biology and nanoscience. His research includes the application of statistical mechanical theory to problems in soft biological matter and in nanoscience and technology, and the description and interpretation of experiments in these fields. Application areas are, among others, synthetic and natural supramolecular assemblies, liquid crystals, proteins, polymers and colloidal particles. Although predominantly focused on theory development, his research has led to three granted patents. Van der Schoot has been active in the field of theoretical virus physics for over ten years. He has, based on experimental data, developed formal models describing the design principles and self-assembly behaviour of virus proteins. He was one of the principal investigators of a large interacademic Dutch research project leading to the development of a synthetic virus for controlled drug delivery, and is part of a large EU-funded international research and training consortium Distruc. 

It is important to use experiments as the starting point for theory development. My research is not for the sake of theory itself, but for understanding real life problems and solving them.”