Prof. Dr. Gijsje Koenderink (1974) is full professor in the Bionanoscience Department of the TU Delft. In 2006 she established the Biological Soft Matter group at the NWO Institute AMOLF, where she also headed the Living Matter Department (2014-2019). Koenderink’s group focuses on quantitative experimental studies of the material properties of cells and tissues. She combines bottom-up synthetic biology approaches with multiscale physical characterization from single molecule force spectroscopy to rheometry. Her group closely collaborates with biological and biomedical groups to address the role of cell and tissue mechanics in disease and tissue regeneration. Prof. Koenderink received various distinctions, including an NWO VIDI (2008), elected membership of the Young Academy of the KNAW (2008), ERC Starting Grant (2013), NWO VICI (2019) and the P-G. de Gennes Prize (2018), and she is a co-recipient of the NWO-Gravitation program Basyc (2017-2027).