Corianne van den Akker

Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute Interdisciplinary Scholar
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Department of Chemistry
Affiliation:
Interdisciplinary PostDoc Alumni

Corianne Van den Akker completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. In 2014, she obtained her PhD in biophysics at FOM Institute AMOLF (The Netherlands), where she worked in the lab of prof. Gijsje Koenderink. The aim of her research was to relate the mechanical properties of amyloid fibrils to their underlying structure across multiple length scales, from molecular up to macroscopic. Furthermore, she combined vibrational spectroscopy techniques with fluorescence and atomic force microscopy to study inhibition of amyloid formation at lipid interfaces using small molecules.

In November 2014, she joined the Boxer lab in the department of chemistry at Stanford to develop a chip to simultaneously perform electrical and ultra-high resolution optical measurements over freestanding lipid bilayers. She will use these chips to study the structure and function of ion channels and ion channel toxins.

 

Related Projects

Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
Neurosciences Interdisciplinary Scholar Awards
2017
Combining electrical and optical measurements on voltage-gated sodium channel toxins

Ion channels in the membranes of neuronal cells are the key regulators of neuronal signaling. An ion channel works as a gate that can open and close to allow specific molecules to enter or leave the cell. One important type of ion channels are voltage-gated sodium channels (NaVs), which are essential for many processes in our brain.