Meet The Team

Principal Investigator

Wim Velema, PhD, PharmD

Wim graduated from the University of Groningen in 2010 after working with Sabeth Verpoorte and Luke Lee at UC Berkeley. He continued his studies in the lab of Ben Feringa where he obtained his PhD with honors in 2014. He was an EMBO- and Rubicon Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Eric Kool at Stanford University from 2015-2019. Starting in 2020 he was appointed as assistant professor at Radboud University in Nijmegen. His current research focuses on developing chemical biology tools to understand bacterial drug resistance and is supported by an ERC Starting Grant and NWO VIDI. He serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of ACS Infectious Diseases.

Postdoctoral Researcher

Mathijs Pals, PhD, PharmD

Mathijs is a postdoc in the Velemalab. He finished his master’s degree in Pharmacy at the University of Groningen in 2019. During his studies he performed a research internship in the department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Biology in the group of Prof. Frank Dekker. The focus of this research was the development of sensor molecules that enable activity-based and selective detection of specific enzymes, which are potential targets for new drugs. In 2020 he joined the VelemaLab in Nijmegen as a PhD-candidate. His current research focuses on elucidating the underlying mechanisms that enable bacteria to rapidly acquire resistance to antibiotics.

PhD Student

Daphne van den Homberg, MSc

Daphne is a PhD candidate in the Velema lab. She obtained her Bachelors and Masters in Biomedical Sciences at the Leiden University Medical Center. During her studies she focused her research on the effect of non-coding RNA  in the group of Prof. Dr. Paul Quax and Prof. Dr. Johann Woijta at the Department of Vascular Surgery at the LUMC and the Department of Internal Medicine II at the Medical University of Vienna, respectively. Before joining the Velema Lab in 2022, she worked as a student research assistant in the Quax group where she published two papers as shared first author. Her current research focusses on prokaryotic riboswitches and error-prone DNA polymerases in the fight against antibiotic resistance.

PhD Student

Phillip Yesley, MSc

Phillip is a PhD candidate in the Velemalab. He finished his master’s degree in Chemistry at the University of Groningen in 2021. During his studies he performed a research internship at the department of molecular genetics  in the group of Prof. Danny Incarnato. The focus of this research was the development of transcriptome-wide  high-throughput screens to detect RNA-ligand interactions. In 2022 he joined the VelemaLab in Nijmegen as a PhD-candidate. His current research focuses on investigating prokaryotic riboswitches in hopes of developing new antibiotics.

PhD Student

Harshitha Ramu, MSc

Harshitha is a PhD candidate in the Velema lab. She obtained her Bachelors in Biotechnology from Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India. She received a Masters in Molecular Mechanisms of Disease from Radboud University. She interned at the Jack Schalken lab in Department of Experimental Urology where she focused on unravelling the function of a long non-coding RNA involved in prostate carcinogenesis. She also performed another internship as an Erasmus+ exchange student at the Padilla-Parra lab in the Department of Infectious Diseases at King’s College London where she worked towards understanding the role of membrane lipids in regulating HIV-1 fusion. In 2022, she joined the Velema Lab in Nijmegen as a PhD candidate. Her project focuses on the development of novel  antibiotics to circumvent the problem of antibiotic resistance.

PhD Student

Georgia Poulladofonou, MSc

Georgia obtained her Bachelors in Chemistry from the University of Athens, Greece in 2020. She continued her studies at Radboud University in Nijmegen following the Master specialization of Molecular Chemistry. After a research internship in the group of Dr. Kevin Neumann she joined the Velema lab for her Master’s internship focusing on the synthesis of fluorogenic probes. Since 2023, Georgia continued her research as a PhD student.

PhD Student

Alexandar Slivkov, MSc

Alex obtained a master’s degree in Medicinal Chemistry from Radboud University in 2024. During his studies he interned in the group of Dr. Dennis Lowik, where he worked on synthesizing novel covalent serine protease inhibitors. For his second internship he joined the group of Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Huck to work on synthesizing photoswitchable urease inhibitors. In 2024 he joined the Velema lab as a PhD student where he will be researching small molecule-RNA interactions.

PhD Student

Peter Kuijken, MSc

Peter is a PhD candidate in the Velema lab. He obtained his Bachelor in Molecular Life Sciences at Radboud University in 2021, where he developed a high-throughput microfluidic device for the fabrication of alginate hydrogel micromotors which resulted in a publication as the second author.  He obtained his MSc in Molecular Sciences at Radboud University in 2024, during which he also published one paper as co-first author and one paper as second author. For his final MSc internship at the VelemaLab he worked on delivery methods of antisense PNA as an antibiotic to prokaryotes. In 2025, he continued with this work alongside alternative exploitations of PNA as a PhD candidate within the group.

PhD Student

Agust Siregar, MRes

Agust is a PhD candidate in the Velema lab. He finished his master's degree in Synthetic Biology at the University College London in 2024. During his study, he develops alternative pipeline for siRNA molecule production through In vitro transcription in the group of Dr. Marco Marques at the Department of Biochemical Engineering, UCL. Before doing his master, he also worked in the Upstream Process Division of Etana Biotech to develop and manufacture mRNA-based vaccine against infectious diseases in Indonesia. In 2025, he joins the Velema lab for his PhD, and the current research focusing on developing new method to quantify the interaction between small molecule drugs and RNA target of interest. His PhD project is also part of the EU MSCA 'TargetRNA' consortium.

MSc Student

Desiree Gonschior, BSc

Desiree

MSc Student

Dymphy Houtzager, BSc

Dymphy obtained her Bachelor’s in Forensic Chemistry at the Avans University of Applied sciences. In September 2024, she started the master Medicinal Chemistry at the Radboud university. Currently she is doing her first internship at the Velema Lab where I am working on the synthesis of photoaffinity labelling probes for live-cell  imaging.

BSc Student

Iza van Roosmalen

Iza is a Bachelor student at HAN University of Applied Sciences, where she studies Biology and Medical Laboratory Research. She is currently performing her first internship at the VelemaLab, where she is focusing on studying transcriptional riboswitches using fluorescent light-up aptamers (FLAPs).

MSc Student

Koen Gerritsen, BSc

Koen obtained his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from HAN University of Applied Sciences in Nijmegen in 2023. During his first internship at GATT Technologies, he worked on poly(2-oxazoline)s. For his second internship, he joined Prof. Dr. Wilson's group, where he focused on the fabrication of polypeptide fibers from polyethylene glycol block copolymers. In September 2023, he began his pre-master's program in Molecular Chemistry at Radboud University. His first master's internship is at the Velema Lab, where he is developing small molecules for RNA binding.