Research institute AMOLF is part of the institutes organization of the
Dutch Research Council
The Dutch Research Council (NWO, Dutch: Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek) is the national research council of the Netherlands. NWO funds thousands of top researchers at universities and institutes and steers the course of ...
(NWO). AMOLF carries out fundamental research on the physics and design principles of natural and man-made complex matter. AMOLF uses these insights to create novel functional materials and find new solutions to societal challenges in renewable energy, green ICT and healthcare. AMOLF is located at the
Amsterdam Science Park
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Amsterdam Science Park is a science park in the Oost city district of Amsterdam, Netherlands with foci on physics, mathematics, information technology and the life sciences. The 70 hectare (175 acre) park provides accommodations for sci ...
.
AMOLF used to be part of the Dutch Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM). On 31 December 2016 FOM integrated in NWO.
History
The institute was established in 1949 by the government as the FOM Laboratory for Mass Spectrography. In 1960, it was renamed to Laboratory for Mass Separation, and in 1966 it was reorganized into a research institute and renamed FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF).
The original research goal was to demonstrate the separation of uranium isotopes by electromagnetic separation methods, a topic of great strategic importance after World War II. To reach this goal, a number of novelanalytical instrumentation were developed, starting with the development of mass-spectrometric tools. In 1953 AMOLF was the first European institute to successfully enrich Uranium. Soon after, research on thermal diffusion in gases followed, as did
ultracentrifuge
An ultracentrifuge is a centrifuge optimized for spinning a rotor at very high speeds, capable of generating acceleration as high as (approx. ). There are two kinds of ultracentrifuges, the preparative and the analytical ultracentrifuge. Both cla ...
concepts, cathode dispersion, excitation of gases by using energetic ions and research on molecular beams. The gas-
ultracentrifuge
An ultracentrifuge is a centrifuge optimized for spinning a rotor at very high speeds, capable of generating acceleration as high as (approx. ). There are two kinds of ultracentrifuges, the preparative and the analytical ultracentrifuge. Both cla ...
developed at AMOLF (under ) provided a base for the commercial enrichment of Uranium at the today well-known company of
URENCO
The Urenco Group is a British-German-Dutch nuclear fuel consortium operating several uranium enrichment plants in Germany, the Netherlands, United States, and United Kingdom. It supplies nuclear power stations in about 15 countries, and stat ...
in
Almelo
Almelo () is a municipality and a city in the eastern Netherlands. The main population centres in the town are Aadorp, Almelo, Mariaparochie, and Bornerbroek.
Almelo has about 72,000 inhabitants in the middle of the rolling countryside of Twente, ...
.
Structure and organization
AMOLF functions as an incubator for Dutch science, both in terms of launching new research themes and in terms of training talented scientists. AMOLF is headed by its director
Huib Bakker
Huib Johan Bakker (born 2 March 1965) is a Dutch physicist working in the field of ultrafast spectroscopy. He has been president of research institute AMOLF since 1 February 2016.
Career
Bakker was born on 2 March 1965 in Haarlem. He studied phys ...
, who succeeded on 1 February 2016. The organization has 19 research groups headed by tenured or tenure-track group leaders. AMOLF employs about 130 researchers and 70 employees for technical and administrative support.
Research
AMOLF’s research program consists of four intertwined themes.
* Nanophotonics: controlling and manipulating light with structures at the nanometer scale
* Nanophotovoltaics: improving solar cells with nanomaterials
* Designer Matter: research and design of new smart materials
* Living Matter: research of biomaterials and multi-cellular systems
AMOLF publishes each year on average 15 PhD theses and over 120 papers.
Notable researchers
*
Huib Bakker
Huib Johan Bakker (born 2 March 1965) is a Dutch physicist working in the field of ultrafast spectroscopy. He has been president of research institute AMOLF since 1 February 2016.
Career
Bakker was born on 2 March 1965 in Haarlem. He studied phys ...
*
Marileen Dogterom
Marileen Dogterom (born 20 November 1967, in Utrecht) is a Dutch biophysicist and professor at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at Delft University of Technology. She published in Science, Cell, and Nature and is notable for her research of the ...
(worked at AMOLF from 1997 to 2013)
*
Daan Frenkel
Daan Frenkel One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 1948, Amsterdam) is a Dutch computational physicist in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge.
Education
...
*
Ad Lagendijk
*
Albert Polman
Albert Polman (born 21 April 1961, Groningen) is a Dutch physicist and former director of the AMOLF research laboratory in Amsterdam.
Polman received his master's degree in physics (1985) and his Ph.D. degree in materials science and engineering ...
References
External links
AMOLF
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Nanotechnology institutions
Organisations based in Amsterdam
Physics institutes
Research institutes in the Netherlands