Profile of the advisor
Prof. dr. ir. Adriaan J. Minnaard received his PhD in the group of Prof. De Groot at the Agricultural University Wageningen, The Netherlands. After two years as a scientist at DSM, he became an assistant professor at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. He has been there ever since, with a break in the group of Prof. Waldmann at the Max Planck Institute in Dortmund. He is full professor, head of the department of Chemical Biology and director of the Stratingh Institute of Chemistry.
Expertise
Natural product synthesis, lipid and terpene (bio)synthesis, asymmetric catalysis, chemical biology.
Profile of the research group
The Chemical Biology group comprises three staff members, sixteen PhD students, two postdocs, a technician and ten undergrads. Research topics in the group are natural product synthesis, including the development of novel synthesis and catalysis methodology, lipid (bio)synthesis, carbohydrate chemistry, glycoconjugates, and activity-based probe development. A long-standing research line is the synthesis and immunology of complex glycolipids from Mycobacterium tuberculosis, an effort supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
