Skip to main content

Wouter Metsola van der Wijngaart

Profile picture of Wouter Metsola van der Wijngaart

PROF., DEPUTY HEAD OF DIVISION


About me

Prospective interns/bachelor/master thesis students: drop me an email.

ProspectivePhD candidates: I only accept students applying open positions posted on the KTH main website.

Prospective Postdocs: follow this link.

About me:

Wouter is a professor in micro and nanosystems with a research focus on microfluidic and lab-on-a-chip systems, micro/nanostructured soft matter, biosensors and biomedical microdevices.

Current research projects:

Digital Dipstick" diagnostics of urinary tract infections>

Programmable Matter

Polymeric cell encapsulation for localized tumour treatment

Silk micro and nanostructuring

Short CV

Wouter van der Wijngaart was born in Belgium in 1973. He is married and has three children. Wouter received the M. Sc. degree in Electrotechnical Engineering, the Degree of Philosophic Academy and the Mathematics Education Degree, all from the KU Leuven, Belgium, in 1996. Wouter received the Ph. D. degree in microsystem technology at KTH in 2002, where in 2005 he promoted to Associate Professor and in 2010 to full Professor.

Wouter is very active in his scientific community. For example, he is/was Technical Programme Chair of the IEEE TRANSDUCERS 2027 conference, Social Events Chair of the MicroTAS 2020 online conference,  General Conference Chair of the IEEE Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) 2015 conference.  He was editorial (2011-2016) and since 2016 executive board member of the "Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering".

Wouter published more than 160 internationally peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. His publications have more than 5000 citations and he has an h-index of 34 according to Google. Wouter has given invited, keynote or plenary talks on numerous occasions at international conferences.

Co-founder of six spin-offcompanies

Easypark is world-leader in mobile parking payments.

Mercene Labs develops and markets off-stoichiometric thiol-ene polymers.

UTI-lizer develops a clinically relevant point-of-care test for bacterial urinary tract infections.

Lucky Loop Medical develops a cytology brush for endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration (EUS-FNA) of pancreatic cysts for early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

MyFuelCell (now discontinued) developed fuel cells for mobile electronic and automobile applications.

XValve(now discontinued) developed microscale pneumatic valves.

International collaborations

Wouter and his team members were also the overall project manager for the European framework projects H2020 ITN ND4ID, FP7 NOROSENSOR, FP7 ROUTINE, FP7 INTOPSENS, FP7 POSITIVE and FP6 Q2M, and workpackage leaders in IMI RAPP-ID and FP6 SABIO.

Finalised research projects

Detection of airborne virus

Direct electrical DNA detection

Synthetic microfluidic paper

Off-Stoichiometry Thiol-Ene (OSTE) polymers

 

Keywords: Microfluidics, Nanofluidics, Microsystems, Nanosystems, MEMS, NEMS, micromachining, polymer, OSTE, PDMS, biomaterials, spider silk, nanowires, gold nanowires, DNA stretching, droplet microfluidics, cell encapsulation, therapy, capillary, lateral flow test, biosensor, diagnostic, lab-on-a-chip, biomedical, micro fuel cell, DNA, superhydrophobic, virus, breath, cell encapsulation, microvalve, photonic, nanophotonic, funny cats :-)


Courses

Degree Project in Electrical Engineering, Second Cycle (EA238X), examiner | Course web

Degree Project in Electrical Engineering, Second Cycle (EA250X), examiner | Course web

Degree Project in Electrical Engineering, specialising in Nanotechnology, Second Cycle (EA249X), examiner | Course web

Degree Project in Electrical Engineering, specializing in Systems, Control and Robotics, Second Cycle (EA236X), examiner | Course web

Degree Project in Engineering Physics, specialising in Nanotechnology, Second Cycle (IA249X), examiner | Course web

Microsystem Technology (EK2350), teacher | Course web

Microsystem Technology for PhD Students (FEK3250), teacher | Course web

Project in Microsystem Technology (EK2210), teacher | Course web

Research Methodology and Scientific Writing (II2202), examiner, teacher, course responsible | Course web