Nanoscience meets Gulliver’s Travels

Wars fought over eggs: In Jonathan Swift’s famous book from 1726, and from the 2010 movie, Gulliver is shipwrecked at the island Lilliput where very tiny people live. It turns out that these Lilliputians are in war for something that seems absolutely absurd: the correct side of breaking a boiled egg. One population believes that …

Meet Nanno, the very important algae

In my PhD project, I study the microalgae Nannochloropsis oceanica. My goal is to get a better understanding of how the genetic regulation of the lipid production in the microalgae is affected by different environmental conditions. You cannot really see Nannochloropsis or other microalgae with the naked eye (they range in sizes from 2-100 µm). …

How to choose a research area?

Being a scientific researcher gives you the freedom to pursue answers to questions that you, and hopefully many others, find interesting. But with freedom comes the necessity to choose: with so many topics to pick from, how do you select which research field to devote yourself to? Once this question has been posed, a number …