ERC Advanced Grant for Siewert-Jan Marrink

BaSyC researcher Siewert-Jan Marrink from the University of Groningen has won an ERC Advanced Grant in the ‘physical sciences and engineering’ category.

These ERC Advanced Grants awarded by the European Research Council to excellent researchers are meant to stimulate ground-breaking research in Europe. Advanced Grants may be awarded up to €2,5 million for a period of 5 years. Siewert-Jan will use this money to set up long-term and ground-breaking research projects.

From the website of our partner ‘University of Groningen’ we learn that Siewert-Jan has developed a dedicated and widely used force field, the Martini model, to achieve a significant speedup of the simulations (see Another Martini for better simulations).

“These simulations have to span different scales, from atoms to molecules to larger structures. The Martini model is especially designed to simulate lipid membranes, like those that surround living cells. Simulations can show processes that are not visible in experiments, such as the interactions between molecules in a cell membrane. This is called ‘computational microscopy’. The ultimate goal of Marrink is to simulate a cell organelle and even an entire cell.”