Roxanne Kieltyka

Roxanne was born in Toronto, Canada. She graduated from the University of Toronto with a BSc in Materials Chemistry in June 2003. Shortly thereafter, she joined the group of Prof. Hanadi Sleiman at McGill University in Montreal, where she received her PhD degree in 2009. Her thesis was on the development of novel platinum-based complexes for the targeting of G-quadruplexes as an anticancer therapy. She then performed her postdoctoral work in the group of Prof. E.W. Meijer on the synthesis of supramolecular polymers for application in the biomedical field.

Roxanne is an Associate Professor within the Supramolecular and Biomaterials Chemistry group at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry in Leiden University. In 2018, she was named one of the Talented 12 by C&E News. In 2019, she was awarded a Starting Grant by the European Research Council.

Curriculum Vitae

Education

Professional appointments

Selected invited lectures

Education

Ph.D., Chemistry, McGill University (2003 – 2009)

Platinum-based DNA binding agents as telomerase inhibitors and cancer therapeutics
Thesis advisor: Prof. Hanadi Sleiman

B.Sc. (Honours), Materials Chemistry, University of Toronto (1998 – 2003)

Honours thesis advisors: Prof. Anthony Pöe and Prof. David Farrar

Professional appointments

Associate Professor, Leiden University (2021 – present)

Assistant Professor, Leiden University (2013 – 2021)

Leiden Institute of Chemistry, Chemical Biology track
Supramolecular and Biomaterials Chemistry group

Postdoctoral research fellow, Eindhoven University of Technology (2009 – 2013)

Supervisor: Prof. E.W. (Bert) Meijer

Awards

ERC Starting Grant, European Research Council (2019)

C&EN’s Talented 12, American Chemical Society (2018)

NWO VENI Grant, Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (2013)

Funding

ERC Proof of Concept (PoC), SUPRAHEART: Supramolecular Hydrogel Driven Assembly of Designer Heart Tissues, Period: 2025-2026

ERA4Health NanoTechMec call 2024, Cellbeat, Lead applicant, Period: 2025-2027

MSCA EVOLVE Programme, Development of synthetic materials-based culture environments for Archaea, Co-applicant.

NWO-FAPESP Grant, A bioinspired mucociliary clearance system based on mucin-mimetic supramolecular glycopolymers and artificial magnetic cilia for human airway stents, Lead applicant, Period: 2024-2027

ERC Proof of Concept (PoC), SUPROTECT: Supramolecular microcapsules for bioreactor expansion of induced pluripotent stem cells, Period: 2024-2025

NWA-ORC Grant, LS-NeoCarE: Large-Scale Neo-Cartilage Engineering: regenerative treatment technologies for osteoarthritis, Consortium member, Period: 2022-2026

oLife Fellowship Programme (PD: Sandeepa Kuala Vittala) Consortium member, Period: 2020-2022

LEaDing Fellows Marie Curie COFUND Postdoc Programme (PD: Wei Tang), Period: 2019-2021

ERC Starting Grant, SupraCTRL: From mechanical control to shape-shifting in supramolecular biomaterials to guide stem cell fate, Period: 2020-2026

Medical Delta, RegMed4D, Consortium member

CSC Scholarship, Aromatic gain as a tool to modulate hydrogen-bond interactions in supramolecular materials (PhD: Ciqing Tong), Period: 2015-2019

CSC Scholarship, Using autonomous biomolecular cascade reactions on hybrid nucleic acid-graft copolymers to diagnose disease (PhD: Tingxian Liu), Period: 2015-2019

NWO ECHO, Applying autonomous biomolecular cascade reactions to synthesize novel hybrid nucleic acid-graft copolymeric materials, Period: 2014-2018

NWO VENI, Supramolecular engineering of a synthetic extracellular matrix using DNA aptamers, Period: 2013-2016

Professional service

Organization and chairing of scientific meetings

Chair, GRC Meeting on Self-assembly and Supramolecular Chemistry (2027)

Co-organizer, symposium in the Macromolecular division of the 2025 International Chemical Congress of the Pacific Basin Societies (Pacifichem) Programmed self-assembly of functional π-systems, Honolulu, HI, USA (12/2025)

Vice-chair, GRC Meeting on Self-assembly and Supramolecular Chemistry, Les Diablerets, Switzerland (05/2025)

Co-organizer, symposium in the World Biomaterials Congress (WBC) 2024 Programming dynamic materials for engineering functional tissues, Daegu, Korea (05/2024)

Co-organizer, symposium in the POLY division in the American Chemical Society Spring 2024 National meeting Structure to Function in Supramolecular Polymers and Materials, New Orleans, LA, USA (03/2024)

Co-organizer, Focus session IUPAC|CHAINS 2023 Bringing synthetic polymer materials to life, The Hague, Netherlands (08/2023)

Co-organizer, symposium in the Macromolecular division of the 2021 International Chemical Congress of the Pacific Basin Societies (Pacifichem) Hierarchical self-assembly and application of functional π-systems, Honolulu, HI, USA (12/2021)

Co-organizer, symposium in the POLY division of the American Chemical Society Fall 2021 National meeting Structure to Function in Supramolecular polymers and Materials, Atlanta, GA, USA (08/2021)

Co-organizer, symposium in the POLY division of the American Chemical Society 255th National meeting International Symposium on Biorelated Polymers: Innovation in Biomedical Polymers, New Orleans, LA, USA (03/2018)

Co-organizer, symposium in the POLY division of the 253rd American Chemical Society National meeting Structure to function in Supramolecular Polymer Materials, San Francisco, CA, USA (03/2017)

Lead organizer, NextGenChem@NL, a 2-day scientific meeting for young faculty in the Netherlands (2015)

Science Policy

Chair, Research Community Committee for Chemistry of Materials at NWO (2025 - present)

Vice-chair, Research Community Committee for Chemistry of Materials at NWO (2023 - 2024)

Member, Research Community Committee for Chemistry of Materials at NWO (2019 - 2023)

Member, Vereniging voor Vernieuwingsimpuls Onderzoekers (VVViO, organization for personal grant holders) (2017)

Editorial and peer reviewing activities

Guest Editor, Biomacromolecules special issue on Stimuli-responsive polymers at the interface with biology (2025)

International Advisory Board Member, ChemNanoMat (2021 - present)

Early Career Advisory Board Member, ChemNanoMat (2019 - 2021)

Guest editor, Macromolecular Rapid Communications special issue on Supramolecular Polymers (2018)

Journal reviewer: Nature Chemistry, Nature Communications, JACS, Angewandte Chemie, Advanced Materials, Advanced Healthcare Materials, Biomacromolecules, Langmuir, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, Scientific Reports, Small, Soft Matter

Grant reviewing activities

Grant reviewer, Leibniz ScienceCampi (2023)

Panel member, NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research) Rubicon programme (ENW) (2022)

Grant reviewer, Fondecyt (Chile) National projects competition (2021)

Grant reviewer, European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant (2021)

Panel member, KNCV (Professional association of chemists, life scientists and process technologists of the Netherlands) Golden Master Award (2019 - present)

Grant reviewer, Narodowe Centrum Nauki (NCN, Poland) OPUS grant (2018)

Panel member, FWO (Flemish Science Foundation, Belgium) FWO-Strategic Basic research, Bioorganic Chemistry (2016 - present)

Grant reviewer, Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) VENI-CW (2016)

Grant reviewer, Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation Exploration Grant Programme

Participation in professional organizations and committees

Member, IUPAC Subcommittee on polymer terminology (2023 - present)

Member, Steering Group of the Fraunhofer ICON BioSensing project, Germany (2019 - present)

Member, Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC) (2018 - present)

Member, Committee of European Union COST action CA16122 Biomaterials and advanced physical techniques for regenerative cardiology and neurology (BIONECA) (2017 - 2021)

Member of various Human Organ and Disease Model Technologies (HDMT) on-chip groups (2017 - present)

Member, American Chemical Society (ACS) (2015 - present)

University Service

Member, University hiring committee (benoemingsadviescommissie) for faculty positions in Chemical Biology (2023)

Member, Ethics Review Committee of the Faculty of Science, Leiden University (2023)

Member, University hiring committee (benoemingsadviescommissie) for faculty positions in Chemical Biology (2020)

Member, MSc Programme Committee Life Science and Technology, Leiden University (2017 - present)

Co-organizer, Junior Science Lab, Leiden Institute of Chemistry (2017)

Co-organizer, Leiden Chemical Biology Lectures at Leiden University (2014 - present)

Co-organizer, McGill Chemistry Students Invited Lecture Series (MCSILS) (2008)

Collaborators

Leiden University & LUMC

Ingrid Meulenbelt (LUMC)

Yolande Ramos (LUMC)

Christine Mummery (LUMC)

Valeria Orlova (LUMC)

Anton-Jan van Zonneveld (LUMC)

Bram Koster (LUMC)

Sylvestre Bonnet

Remus Dame

The Netherlands

Ilja Voets (Eindhoven University of Technology)

Massimo Mastrangeli (Delft University of Technology)

Robert Passier (UTwente)

Rienk Eelkema (Delft University of Technology)

Jan van Esch (Delft University of Technology)

International

Judy Wu (University of Houston, TX, USA)

Doris Heinrich (TU Ilmenau/IBA Heilingenstadt, DE)

Luis Sánchez (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, ES)

Thuat Trinh (Norwegian Institute for Science and Technology, NO)

Secoya Technologies (BE)

Outreach

Exhibition of the group research in the Nacht van Ontdekkingen (public science festival) through the Rijksmuseum Boerhaave (National Museum of the History of Science and Medicine) (2023)

Member, Program Committee of MaterialsNL Congress, MaterialenNL Platform, The Netherlands (2023)

Co-chair, 10th Life study association symposium Latest developments in personalized medicine technologies, Leiden University (2022)

ERC webinar Good practices for a successful ERC proposal, European Young Chemists’ Network (2020)

Mentor, Women in Science program, National Research Council of Canada (NSERC) CREATE grant Programmed molecules for therapeutics, sensing and diagnostics – PROMOTE (2019-present)

Development of course material for the Leiden University College (2019)

Lecturer, University Pre-Class, Leiden University, Leiden NL (2018-present)

Selected invited lectures

Royal Society of Chemistry Biennial, Bilbao, Spain, 06/2025

ERC Grantees Conference, Porvoo, Finland, 06/2025

ISMSC 2025, Kyoto, Japan, 05/2025

High Polymer Research Group 63rd Conference, Pott Shrigley, UK, 05/2025

Secoya Technologies Encaps’ Days 2025, Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium, 04/2025

Universidad Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 03/2025

RSC Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry Early Career Researchers meeting, Glasgow, UK, 07/2024

Nanoscience Days 2023, Jyväskylä, Finland, 10/2023

GRC Self-assembly and Supramolecular Chemistry, Les Diablerets, Switzerland, 05/2023

SUPRALIFE Summer School, Aveiro, Portugal, 03/2023

8th EuChemS Chemistry Congress, ERC Grantee session, Lisbon, Portugal, 08/2022

nanoBIOCARGO, Madrid, Spain, 07/2022

McGill University PROMOTE Special Seminar, Montreal, QC, Canada, 03/2022

University of Waterloo Chemical Seminar Series, Waterloo, ON, Canada, 03/2022

University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, 03/2022

PAC Symposium, Utrecht, The Netherlands, 03/2022

University of Glasgow, School of Chemistry, Online, 02/2022

ACS Presidential Symposium New Frontiers and Opportunities for Chemistry, Fall 2021 ACS National Meeting, Atlanta, GA, USA, 08/2021

CÚRAM, SFI Research Center for Medical Devices, Ireland, Online, 04/2021

CHAINS (Annual Dutch Chemistry Conference) – Focus session Dynamic polymers for advanced materials, Online, 12/2020

ACES (Asian Chemical Editorial Society, Wiley) Early Career Research Symposium, Online, 09/2020

University of Oulu, Finland, 02/2020

University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 02/2020

University of Kent, Kent, England, 12/2019

Regeneration day, University of Leiden/Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), Leiden, Netherlands, 11/2019

FMS Research Center Supramolecular Chemistry Course 2019, University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands, 06/2019

School of Applied and Interdisciplinary Sciences (SAIS) Symposium Kolkata, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Kolkata, India, 03/2019

IISER Trivandrum – RSC Symposium on Functional Supramolecular Chemistry, Trivandrum, India, 03/2019

CSIR-NIST, Trivandrum, India, 03/2019

C&EN’s Talented 12 symposium, 256th ACS meeting Boston, MA, USA, 08/2018

101st Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition, Symposium on Hierarchical Self-Assembly of Discrete π-Conjugated and Metal-Containing Systems, Edmonton, AB, Canada, 05/2018

University of Houston, Physical Chemistry Seminar, Houston, TX, USA, 04/2017

252nd ACS meeting, Symposium on Advanced Functional Biopolymers & Biomaterials, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, PA, USA, 08/2016

Supramolecular materials as artificial extracellular matrix mimics, Netherlands Research School of Chemical Biology, Leiden University, Leiden, NL, 02/2015

6th Canadian symposium on telomeres and telomerase, Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 05/2008