Led by Dr Iddo Heller at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the team has received funding of almost 3 million euros from the NWO ENW-XL Open Competition scheme. Combining expertise from various disciplines, the researchers aim to unravel the design-principles of synthetic nanomachines, to design motorized nanoscale building blocks and to demonstrate the first light-controlled artificial muscles and conveyor belts. This will constitute an important step towards new applications such as in nanomedicine and in the design of adaptive, mobile, and self-healing materials.

A PhD student supervised by Dr Jocelyne Vreede of the HIMS research group Computational Chemistry will contribute with molecular simulations of the interaction between light-driven molecular motors and DNA molecules. The latter will be used as a structural building block of the envisioned molecular machines.

See also

• NWO announcement: 64 million euros for groundbreaking fundamental research projects
• Research of Dr Jocelyne Vreede at the Computational Chemistry group.