Prof. Sijbren Otto, Ph.D.

Sijbren Otto is Professor of Systems Chemistry at the University of Groningen, Netherlands.

He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Groningen. For his postdoc he went to Steven L. Regen‘s lab at the Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. In 1999 he received a Marie Curie Fellowship and moved to the University of Cambridge to work with Jeremy K. M. Sanders. In 2011 Sijbren Otto accepted an appointment as assistant professor at the University of Groningen and was promoted as associate professor and full professor in 2016. He has won numerous awards such as an ERC Starting Grant in 2010 and an ERC Advanced Grant in 2017.

Sijbren Otto explores the interface between supramolecular chemistry, biology, catalysis and material science by studying dynamic combinatorial libraries: molecular networks involving dynamically exchanging chemical species. He is most interested in replication dynamics using basic chemical systems. His work is relevant to disparate fields ranging from the origins of life (self-replicating systems, dynamic kinetic stability) to materials chemistry (self-synthesising fibres, gels and surface functionalized nanoparticles.

He is a Visiting Fellow in May and June 2018 in the context of the CAS Research Group "Recreating the Origin of Life" following an invitation from Prof. Dr. Dieter Braun.

In June, Charalampos Pappas, Ph.D. und Marcel Eleveld, members of Sijbren Otto´s Research Group, will also be Visiting Fellows at CAS.