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.
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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. Two years later, the Fulbright Program granted her a fellowship. 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, with a thesis on "Physical Aspects of Microtubule Growth and Mitotic Spindle Formation," 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.
Dogterom holds professional ties to various universities. In 2000, she became a professor at Leiden University, and become a full professor in 2010. Since 2014, she has been the Chair of the Department of Bionanoscience at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at Delft University of Technology. Since 2016, she has held the title of "Medical Delta Professor," meaning she held professorships at both Delft and Leiden.
In 2006, Dogterom took a sabbatical for a year to work at Erasmus MC in Anna Akhmanova's research group, which specialized in cell biology and cytoskeletons. In 2013, they received an ERC Synergy grant to collaborate on research on cytoskeleton regulation by the cell.
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.
In 2018, Dogterom was awarded a Spinoza Prize, which grants a large sum to a team conducting novel research in the Netherlands. Dogterom's former colleague Anna Akhmanova was awarded a Spinoza Prize in the same year. Dogterom served as Vice President of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences from 2020 to 2022, 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. She has been a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2016. Dogterom has been awarded the following grants, fellowships, and prizes:
2019 - Fellow of the Biophysical Society
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)