"Organs-on-a-chip, born from the marriage between microsystems and biology, can help us understand the mechanisms underlying health and disease"

Jelle Sleeboom, born in Utrecht in 1989, obtained his BSc in Mechanical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology in 2012. During his final bachelor project, under supervision of dr. Hans Wyss, he contributed to microfluidic single particle trapping and squeezing technology. His sparked interest in microfluidic technology drove him to join prof.dr.ir. Jaap den Toonder's Microsystems group as an MSc student in 2013. During his time in the group, he spent several months abroad at Harvard's Wyss Institute in Boston, USA, where he worked on a microfluidic model of the Blood Brain Barrier. After graduating (with honors) in the brain-on-a-chip project of dr. Regina Luttge, he started his joint PhD in the Soft Tissue Engineering & Mechanobiology (STEM) and Microsystems groups in 2016. He successfully defended his PhD thesis titled "Microfluidic models of metastasis: In vitro approaches to study the tumor microenvironment" on September 29th, 2020.

Jelle Sleeboom is a postdoctoral researcher in prof.dr.ir. Jaap den Toonder's Microsystems group. His current research focuses on developing "Cancer-on-a-chip" technology to study the mechanisms that underlie cancer metastasis. Within this topic, his main research interest lie in the role of oxygen in directional cancer cell migration, and the involvement of extracellular matrix mechanics in invasion. His personal research interests are in developing and understanding microfabrication methods, microfluidics, organ-on-chip technology, mechanobiology, and cancer-on-chip technology.