Prof.dr.ir. Albert van den Berg
Professor - University of Twente | BIOS, Lab on Chip group
Albert van den Berg received his MSc in applied physics in 1983, and his PhD in 1988 both at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. From 1988-1993 he worked in Neuchatel, Switzerland, at the CSEM and the University (IMT) on miniaturized chemical sensors. In 2000 he was appointed as full professor on Miniaturized Systems for (Bio)Chemical Analysis in the faculty of Electrical Engineering and part of the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology. In 1994 he initiated together with Prof. Bergveld the international MicroTAS conference series. He published over 450 peer reviewed publications (H=63 WoS, H=85 Google Scholar) a.o. in Science, Nature, PNAS, NanoLetters etc, and from his group > 10 spin-off companies started. He received several honors and awards such as Simon Stevin (2002), two ERC Advanced (2008, 2015) and four ERC Proof of Concept (2011, 2013, 2016, 2020) grants, Simon Stevin award (engineering sciences), Spinoza prize (2009), Distinguished University Professor (Twente, 2010).
Presentation
Lab on Chip, how and where it started.
In 2010, during a sabbatical stay at the Wyss Institute at Harvard, I came in contact with Don Ingber and Dan Huh, who worked on an innovative and new concept: an organ on a chip. Their work on a flexible chip mimicking the respiratory action of lung alveoli on a chip and the effects on nanoparticle uptake was groundbreaking and started a whole new field, that of Organs on Chip, with great application potential in drug development, personalized medicine and disease modeling. This concept was picked up by Andries van der Meer, Christine Mummery and myself, and resulted in amonst others a KNAW funded coordination program ending in the start of HDMT, a successful Lorentz workshop, the first international Organ on Chip conference, an ERC advanced program, a Gravitation program and the European Organ on Chip Society (EUROoCS). The TechMed center and MESA+ institute have become leading institutes in this area with activities on a.o. blood vessels, heart cells, and stem cell differentiation