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.

Since 2023, I am assistant professor in Conservation Science with a position split between HIMS and the Conservation & Restoration program at the Faculty of Humanities, with an additional appointment at the Rijksmuseum. In my research, I develop physical model systems and analytical methods to study the chemical processes 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, polymer analysis, metal-organic structures, data analysis, and computational modeling. I have (co-)authored >43 peer-reviewed papers, am part of the Netherlands Institute for Conservation, Art & Science (NICAS), and I have a long-running collaboration with the Applied Mechanics and Design group at TU Eindhoven.

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 at HIMS and in the Computational Soft Matter Lab, a joint initiative of HIMS, the Informatics Institute—to which I am also affiliated—and the Institute of Physics. Within this interdisciplinary context, I develop and apply novel simulation and AI methods to design molecules and materials, particularly in the low and expensive data regime. I am part of the Research Priority Area in Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Molecules and Materials, co-leading two projects on plant-based food proteins and salt-based thermal energy storage. In 2024, I obtained an NWO Veni grant to predict nanoplastic risks to protein function and health. I am an active member of the HIMS Diversity team, and the founder of the HIMS fellowships for students of underrepresented groups. Since November 2025, I am a board member of the Amsterdam Young Academy.

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 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.