My journey at HIMS started in 2013 as a visiting researcher. I returned in 2015 as a post-doc and have been appointed assistant professor in 2019. I am an analytical chemist with a background in the characterization and environmental fate of carbon nanoparticles. My research is focused on two fields which I am most passionate about, art conservation and the environment, especially how carbon-nanocages, nano/micro-plastics, and associated chemicals impact our ecosystem, health, and society. I work in multidisciplinary teams, including chemists, physicists, biochemists, computational chemists, humanities researchers, eco-toxicologists, environmental scientists, polymer chemists, artists and conservators. I am also passionate about teaching and education. I am a teacher and coordinator of the analytical sciences track of the UvA-VU joint MSc chemistry program.

In 2024, I joined HIMS as tenure track assistant professor in the Homogeneous, Supramolecular and Bio-Inspired Catalysis group, contributing to the Research Priority Area of ‘Sustainable Chemistry’. My research bridges (photo)reactions in porous materials and inventive spectroscopy.  The idea is that this ‘nano-confinement’ will reduce interaction pathlengths, thus enhancing the conversion rate of photoreactions that depend on short-lived excited species. My research will focus on heterogenous photoredox chemistry in metal-organic and covalent-organic frameworks. I combine these photoactive materials with (fast) spectroscopic techniques (UV-vis, IR, X-rays) to study how spatial confinement influences catalytic activity and selectivity, thereby advancing sustainable chemical processes. As these studies often require new analytical tools and test stations that are developed, built and tested in our group.

I moved to HIMS as an assistant professor in 2017 to study the activity of catalysts in sustainable processes by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) both experimentally and theoretically. Personally, I am still intrigued by metal-ligand bond interactions of organometallic compounds and their theoretical description by ab initio and DFT methods. My research focuses on exploring the reaction pathways of highly reactive, transient species stabilized by transition metals with applications in homogenous catalysis. Furthermore, I am appointed as a visiting professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Johannesburg.

I joined HIMS in 2020 as Assistant Professor after been awarded with a tenure-track grant from the NWO program on electrochemical conversion and materials (ECCM). I am member of the Heterogeneous Catalysis and Sustainable Chemistry and my research focus on fundamental and applied aspects of electrochemical energy conversion and production of chemicals and fuels using renewable electricity. My team is part of the Research Priority Area Sustainable Chemistry, strengthening the RPA's efforts in electrosynthesis and electrocatalysis. In collaboration with the Amsterdam Centre for Electrochemistry (Amcel), which includes researchers from the UvA, AMOLF, ARCNL, Avantium Liquid Light lab and Shell, my team will boost the growing of electrochemistry in the Amsterdam area.

In January 2019 I started my tenure track at HIMS as an assistant professor in Analytical Chemistry. My research focuses on the development of advanced separation science and mass spectrometry to characterize protein systems (e.g. enzymes) and synthetic polymers (e.g. biodegradable polymers). I use these technologies to characterize the molecular structures and distributions that are responsible for characteristic properties of the macromolecules (e.g. activity, stability). I was awarded the Ernst-Bayer Award in 2014 and the Csaba Horváth Young-Scientist Award in 2015. In October 2018 the Analytical Scientist magazine listed me among the 'Fab Forty' of gifted young scientists 'making waves in analytical science.'

Since 2019, I work at HIMS with an NWO-Veni grant and I have a 20% appointment at the Rijksmuseum. In my research, I develop model systems and analytical methods to study the chemical process that change the structural integrity and appearance of oil paintings. This research combines many of the research themes within HIMS, with scientific challenges in the fields of spectroscopy, catalysis, data analysis, and computational modeling. Currently, my main focus is to elucidate the effects of water on several important oil paint degradation pathways. I have (co-)authored 25 peer-reviewed papers, am part of the Netherlands Institute for Conservation, Art & Science (NICAS), and I collaborate with researchers at Northwestern University, TU Eindhoven, and Wageningen University.

I joined HIMS in 2022 as Tenure Track Assistant Professor in Chemistry of Biomolecular Systems. I am a member of the Computational Chemistry group and my research focuses on multiscale simulations of biomolecular systems. In particular,  we design coarse-grained models able to reproduce the intrinsic flexibility of nanoparticles (NPs) and use atomistic simulations combined with rational design to develop ligands for the NPs. With a recent grant awarded by the Synapsis Foundation, we design and validate agents (e.g. peptides, proteins) to modulate the activity of proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases.

Since 2023, I am an assistant professor in the Computational Chemistry group of the van ‘t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences (HIMS) and in the Computational Soft Matter Lab, a joint initiative of HIMS, the Institute of Physics and the Informatics Institute. Within this highly interdisciplinary context, I develop and apply cutting-edge computational techniques to reverse-engineer properties and behavior in various molecular and soft matter systems. I explore and exploit functionality by combining machine learning with evolutionary and Bayesian optimization to guide enhanced sampling simulations at various resolutions. Currently, I am involved in two Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Molecules and Materials (AI4SMM) projects, focused on developing salt hydrates for thermal energy storage and plant proteins for sustainable food.

I joined HIMS in 2016 with an NWO-VIDI grant and became a MacGillavry fellow in 2019. I have a research group in organic chemistry from space to the origins of (universal) life and mostly teach interdisciplinary courses. My interstellar-chemistry focus involves combined experimental and theoretical work on (cold) gas-phase spectroscopy and photochemistry of (hydro)carbon species. My origins research focuses on possible alternative building blocks of life and their prebiotic chemistry routes under varying planetary conditions. My research is highly interdisciplinary and I have collaborations with astronomy (API, Leiden Observatory, NASA ARC), geosciences (UU), biology (SILS), FELIX Laboratory (RU), and more. My research is mainly funded by NWO (VIDI, Dutch Astrochemistry Network, Planetary and Exoplanetary Science) and the national ORIGINS Center.

I joined HIMS in 2020 as a tenure track researcher in the Homogeneous Catalysis group. My research focuses on the development and characterization of supramolecular systems such as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and discrete coordination cages with an application in artificial photosynthesis and organic photo-redox catalysis. I was appointed within the framework of the Connecting Science programme of the Faculty of Science that aims to conduct research with impact on science and society. Prior to this I was a postdoctoral researcher with a Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellowship in the group of Prof. Guido Clever at TU Dortmund, Germany.

I started at UvA in 2020 as an assistant professor and a member of the Chemometrics and Advanced Separations Team (CAST) within the Analytical Chemistry group. Additionally, I have been appointed as an Honorary senior fellow at the University of Queensland (UQ), Australia. My research focuses on the application of datascience/chemometrics in analytical chemistry, particularly with high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS). I am currently the PI of a large international collaborative inter-laboratory trial, looking at the application of HRMS in environmental chemistry, through the Norman-Network with 22 participants. Recently, my collaboration with the UQ on wastewater-based epidemiology made it to the cover of Environmental Sciences & Technology and was the topic of an article by the Economist London.

I started my tenure track at HIMS as an assistant professor in Molecular Photonics group in January 2023. My research explores the effect of topography and topology of organic molecules and materials on their properties with a focus on light-matter interactions and the reactivity of molecules in their excited states. Our work is multidisciplinary and typically combines multi-step organic synthesis, quantum-chemical calculations and spectroscopy. Previously, I received the Ambizione career grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation to found my independent research group at the University of Basel and I was appointed later as a non-tenure track assistant professor at the University of Bern supported by the ERC starting grant TOPOCLIP.
You can learn more about my group’s work here: https://sites.google.com/view/solomeklab

The interaction of light and matter is the basis of our research. We focus on light activated (hybrid) nanomaterials for energy and health. We develop and study new materials for thin film solar cells (doped methylammonium-free perovskites) as well as new photoactive systems for medical applications (photodynamic therapy and photo-antiseptic materials, activated by NIR light). Photoinduced electron transfer, energy transfer and triplet state formation in molecular-, supramolecular- and nanosystems are key processes. I have participated in the SUSANA and UNINANOCUPS EC networks, was supported by the Vietnamese Overseas Scholarship Program, and am currently involved in a H2020 ITN/EJD. After accomplishing an MSc and a PhD at the UvA, I returned to my Alma Mater in 1999.