Anouk Rijs is full professor of Analytics of Biomolecular Interactions in the BioAnalytical Chemistry Division at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her research focuses on the structural characterization and elucidation of molecular mechanisms to understand biological processes at the molecular level. Within this theme, she has a special interest in peptide and protein aggregation, the transition from soluble native structures to insoluble organized nanostructures. This process is directly related to human neurodegenerative diseases, biopharmaceuticals, biological function and bio-engineering of smart materials.

She specializes in mass spectrometry interfaced with molecular spectroscopy, predominantly in infrared and UV photodissociation spectroscopy. In the MS-LaserLab, her team is working on the hyphenation of ion mobility-mass spectrometry with IR ion spectroscopy and droplet-microfluidics electrospray ionization. With this unique 4D combination, the structure and kinetics of -for example an aggregating peptide- can be probed in a single experiment. Initially, this novel approach will be used to understand the aggregation mechanism of Parkinson’s disease in order to ultimately control and inhibit the aggregation process. Moreover, in collaboration with University of Manchester, she works on the identification of biomarkers for Parkinson’s Disease.

Anouk was in 2020 awarded with an NWO-VICI and NWO-Aspasia grant by which she aims to unravel and ultimately control the protein aggregation mechanism of neurodegenerative diseases using mass spectrometry hyphenated with IR spectroscopy and ion mobility. Amongst others, she received Mildred Dresselhaus guest professor Award 2015 and a related guest-professor position 2015-2016 (Universität Hamburg, DESY, CFEL, Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging, Germany), a NWO Dutch Astrochemistry Network II grant, participated in the NWO “National Roadmap for Large-Scale Research Facilities” for HFML-FELIX (2018 and 2020), and co-founded the Radboud Inter-faculty Initiative: Consortium for Glycoscience.

Currently, she is on the scientific board of the IBBI conference series and member of the local organizing committee of the International Mass Spectrometry Conference 2022 (IMSC2022, Maastricht (NL)). In addition, she is a board-member of the NWO Fundamentals and Methods in Chemistry research community, physics board-member at the Lorentz Center, member of the advisory editorial board of Analysis and Sensing (Chemistry Europe, Wiley) and Deputy Chair of Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics (PCCP) of the Royal Society of Chemistry.