PhD student
Ellen Zwiers
RESEARCH
I am a PhD researcher in the Microbial Immunity group at the Department of Cell and Chemical Biology. My main focus is on discovering and characterizing bacterial defense systems against bacteriophages and unraveling their underlying molecular mechanisms using structural biology, specifically Cryo-electron microscopy. By studying these systems at the structural level, I aim to contribute to our understanding of fundamental principles in microbial immunity and their potential applications in biotechnology and medicine.
CURRICULUM VITAE
I obtained my Bachelor's degree in Life Science and Technology in 2022 and my Master's degree in Life Science and Technology in 2025 at Delft University of Technology, providing me with a solid background in industrial- and medical biotechnology. During my Master's, I worked within the Building a Synthetic Cell consortium on constructing and characterizing synthetic chromosomes for synthetic cells and completed an internship at a company in Copenhagen focused on developing nature-inspired therapeutics using microbial platforms. My experiences during my Master's sparked a growing fascination with molecular mechanisms underlying microbial interactions which drove me to join the Microbial Immunity group at the Department of Cell and Chemical Biology, where I get to turn this curiosity into research on phage-bacteria interactions.
Groups:
Loeff Lab / Microbial Immunity
