Prof. Dr. M. P. Lettinga obtained his PhD in the Department of Molecular Biophysics and the Van `t Hoff Laboratory for Physical and Colloidal Chemistry, Debye-Instituut, University Utrecht, the Netherlands, in 1999. His work included photo-physical characterization of fluorophores and their application in the study of the rotational dynamics of concentrated colloids. He joined in 2000 the Soft Condensed Matter group at the FZ Jülich, initially as post doc and since 2001 as staff member. In 2011 he habilitated in Physics at the Heinrich-Heine Universität, Düsseldorf, on the theme Dynamics and Flow Behaviour of Colloidal Rod-like particles. Since 2012 he is part-time professor at the KU Leuven.
His main interest is to gain a microscopic understanding of the interplay between structure and flow. He has developed experimental techniques to study structure under flow, using neutron and X-ray scattering and light microscopy, for a broad range of systems. The main systems of interest at the moment are blood flow in 3D microchannels and cells in artificial aligned matrices.