Daan Geerke

Dr. Daan Geerke is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, with dual appointments in Chemistry & Pharmaceutical Sciences and AIMMS. His research focuses on computational approaches to predict drug metabolism, enzyme flexibility modeling, and biomolecular simulation tool development. He leads a team including senior scientists and PhD students, and teaches courses in computational chemistry, molecular modeling, and structural biology.

Education: PhD in Physical Chemistry (ETH Zurich, 2007), postdoctoral fellowship at IBM Almaden Research Center (2007–2009). Academic appointments include Assistant Professor (2009–2017) and current Associate Professor roles. He has secured significant grants including NWO-Veni (2009), NWO-Vidi (2013), and eScience funding (2015). His work contributes to UN SDG 3 (Good Health) through drug discovery innovations.

Research interests integrate computational and experimental approaches to study Cytochrome P450 enzymes, proteases, and methyltransferases. Recent publications address venom inhibitor design, blood coagulation factor engineering, and J-DNA binding mechanisms. He collaborates with medical centers and industry on translational projects.

Grants include HPC allocations from VU's High Performance Computing Council and leadership in EU's eTOX project. His lab develops tools like OFraMP for molecular simulations, advancing drug discovery workflows.