Prof. Herre van der Zant is an experimental physicist exploring quantum phenomena in electronics and mechanics at the nanometer scale. He finished his PhD in 1991 at the Delft University of Technology on measurements of classical and quantum phase transitions in Josephson junction arrays. After his PhD, he went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to work on the applications of superconducting electronics. Three years later, Herre van der Zant returned to Delft and received a five-year fellowship from the Dutch Royal Academy for Sciences to research mesoscopic charge density waves.
In 2005, he cofounded a new research group in the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience at the Delft University of Technology centered around two research lines: molecular electronics and nano-electro-mechanical systems. In the years thereafter, the group advanced to the forefront of these research areas worldwide. He was head of the Quantum Nanoscience department at Delft and leader of the sensor work package within the graphene flagship. The present vanderZant laboratory at Delft has a research focus on the nanomechanics of atomically thin membranes and on bottom-up nanoelectronics, which includes the use of single (bio-)molecules, biological nanoparticles like ferritin and cable bacteria.
