Cell scientist to watch - Lukas Kapitein

Abstract

Lukas Kapitein studied physics at the VU University in Amsterdam and graduated with a master's degree in experimental physics. He went on to do his PhD in the research groups of Christoph Schmidt and Erwin Peterman on the motility of mitotic kinesins, and in 2007, he won the biannual best thesis award from the Dutch society for Biophysics and Biomedical Technology. Lukas then joined the laboratory of Casper Hoogenraad at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam to work on the cytoskeleton and polarised cargo transport in neurons. In 2011, he became an assistant professor at Utrecht University, received a European Research Council starting grant and then a Vidi fellowship from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), and became associate professor in 2016. His group uses super-resolution microscopy and optogenetics to study how motor proteins achieve transport of cargo and organelles in different cell types.