Iwijn De Vlaminck obtained a PhD from the KuLeuven in Belgium. He has a background in applied physics, specifically in nanoscale optics and mechanics. After his PhD he joined the lab of Cees Dekker at the TUDelft as a postdoc in single-molecule biophysics. He joined the lab of Stephen Quake at Stanford University as a postdoctoral researcher in 2012. His current interests include single-cell genomics and sequencing-based medical diagnostics.