News

On 31 October 2025, the second annual ANION Symposium brought together around 80 researchers from across the Netherlands at the WCW Congress Center and AMOLF in Amsterdam. The one-day event celebrated the growing ANION community and highlighted the breadth of research taking place across the consortium’s partner institutes.

Two ANION researchers, Dr. Rik Mom (Leiden University) and Dr. Loredana Protesescu (University of Groningen), have each been awarded a Vidi grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). These competitive grants, worth up to €850,000, are part of the NWO talent programme designed to enable excellent scientists to establish their own research groups and pursue innovative research lines over the next five years.

We are delighted to share that ANION member Loredana Protesescu has been awarded a prestigious ERC Starting Grant for her project BORNANO: Solution processable metal boride nanostructures for functional hard coatings in extreme conditions.

We are proud to announce that ANION’s Scientific Director, Professor Marc Koper (Leiden University), has been awarded the EuChemS Gold Medal 2026. This prestigious European prize is awarded every two years and recognises outstanding achievements in chemistry.

Nina Chen is the first PhD student hired by the ANION consortium. She started her PhD research on February 1st at the University of Amsterdam, supervised by ANION members Amanda Garcia and Sander Woutersen. We asked Nina some questions about her background and plans.

Currently available positions can be found on the Vacancies page.

The ANION consortium was kicked-off with a successful meeting on Friday, October 18th at Scheltema Leiden. Thanks to all our participants and speakers, especially our guest speaker, Dr. Jeffrey E. Dick from Purdue University, who is also a member of the ANION advisory board.