Alina Astefanei is an assistant professor at the van’t Hoff Institute for Molecular Science, University of Amsterdam. Alina has a strong background in carbon nanoparticles characterization. Currently, she works on methodological innovation to solve problems of high impact on our society focusing on the environmental and art conservation fields. She is collaborating with multiple water research institutes/companies and museums. She develops tools for detailed characterization and quantitation of complex systems involving both large and small molecules (proteins, nanoparticles, dyes/pigments), to understand how they interact with each other, and how they change over time in different conditions. Field-flow fractionation and mass spectrometry (using soft and ambient ionization techniques) and their hyphenations are her main research focus.

Alina currently holds a PPS TopSector Chemie grant (Chemistry NL) on the role of ions in the multimerization of β-galactosidas in collaboration with the computational chemistry group at HIMS (Astefanei, Vreede). She also collaborates within the, HOSAna and UnMatched projects.

Alina is a board member of Women in the Faculty of Science (WiF) a platform focused on support, advice and coaching of female scientists at the Faculty of Science, at University of Amsterdam. She is also a member of the HIMS diversity board, working on improving aspects on diversity and inclusiveness within the institute. She has received the SCM award in 2015 for her work on fullerene nanoparticles analysis and characterization within her PhD at the University of Barcelona.