Pim Frederix was born in Gennep in the south-east of the Netherlands in 1986. He finished his chemistry Bsc and MSc at Radboud University Nijmegen, specializing in the spectroscopy of small molecules. He then performed his PhD in physics at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, UK under the supervision of Neil Hunt and Rein Ulijn, studying the self-assembly of peptides using (ultrafast) infrared spectroscopy and molecular dynamics simulations. Graduating in 2013, he has spent another year in Glasgow as a post-doc on the commercialization of his research output in the field of biomimetic hydrogen gas production. In May 2014 he has joined the Otto lab in a shared project with the group of Siewert-Jan Marrink using computational methods to study dynamic combinatorial libraries of peptides on the molecular scale.

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Charalampos (Babis) Pappas was born in Karpenissi (Greece) in 1987. He finished his Bsc and Msc at University of Ioannina in Greece, where he studied the three-dimensional structure of bioactive molecules using multidimensional NMR techniques. Then he performed his PhD in the UK at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, under the supervision of Prof. Rein Ulijn, studying sound responsive assemblies and far-from-equilibrium chemical systems using biocatalytic self-assembly. In September 2016 he has joined the Otto lab as a postdoctoral researcher to study dissipative self-replication.

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Omer Markovitch was born at a very young age in Israel. He graduated B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in chemistry from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel. In his masters he studied water structure and dynamics and particularly focused on the Grotthuss mechanism of proton transport in liquid water. He then moved to the Weizmann Institute for Science in Rehovot, Israel, to study dynamics and evolution of chemical system in relation to the origins of life, under the supervision of Prof. Doron Lancet. After graduating his Ph.D. in 2014, he moved to the UK to study systems and synthetic biology, followed by a short stay in Japan. Omer joined Otto's group in the middle of 2017 as a postdoctoral researcher to study the dynamics of multi-component macro-cycle replication via bottom-up and top-down modelling approaches. Homepage of Omer Markovitch

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Kai Liu was born in 1989 in China. He got his Bsc in Yanshan University in Qinhuangdao, China. He obtained Msc and PhD in Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. During his Master, he developed anti-biofouling castor oil-based waterborne polyurethane. In his doctoral research, he focused on fabrication of functional nanostructures based on hierarchical self-assembly of amino acids/peptides and porphyrins, under the supervision of Prof. Xuehai Yan. In May 2018 he joined Prof. Otto's group as a postdoctoral researcher to study photometabolic self-replication. Kai's ORDCID.

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Falk Wachowius comes from Germany and studied biochemistry at the Universities of Greifswald and Marseille and synthesized imidazole-derivatives for DNA recognition during his masters. He moved to the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen for his PhD, working on RNA-ligating deoxyribozymes and spin-labeled RNA after which he joined the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge to study RNA self-replication and the origins of life. He joined the Otto group in 2018 as a postdoctoral researcher to study peptide and DNA self-replication systems.

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Piotr Nowak was born in 1987 in Warsaw, Poland. He studied chemistry at the University of Warsaw. He worked on high-pressure transesterification reaction of sterically hindered esters and stereoselective cycloadditions of nitrile oxides to alkenes under the supervision of Prof. Janusz Jurczak. He was also member and President of Warsaw University Student Chemical Society "Fulleren". He received his MSc in 2010 with the thesis entiteled "Asymmetric 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reaction. The influence of electronic properties of substrates on reactivity and selectivity". Then he joined the research group of Sijbren Otto at the Centre for Systems Chemistry and Stratingh Institute for Chemistry in Groningen, the Netherlands, to work on self-replicating chemical systems, dynamic combinatorial chemistry and nanomaterials. Google profile of Piotr Nowak.

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Shuo Yang was born in GuangDong Province, China in 1987. He worked on Layer-by-Layer self-assembly and peptides as gene vectors in the group of Prof XianZheng Zhang and received his Master's degree (2011) from WuHan University, China. He is now pursuing his PhD in the group of Sijbren Otto at the University of Groningen.

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Ivica Cvrtila was born in Zagreb, Croatia, in 1987. He studied chemistry in Zagreb from 2006 to 2011 and obtained MSc working on structural chemistry of hexacyanoferrates of organic bases, mostly focused on hydrogen bonded networks that arise from protonated hexacyanoferric units. During the studies he also worked on pyridine derivatives' adducts of metal(II) benzoylacetonates and related coordination compounds. In 2012 he joined the group of Sijbren Otto to pursue his PhD in the field of dynamic combinatorial chemistry. His current goals are artificial beta-barrels and beta-tubes arising from dynamic combinatorial libraries.

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Yigit Altay was born in Ankara, Turkey, in 1988. He received his BSc (magna cum laude) in 2011 from Bilkent University. He obtained his MSc in 2013 from same university, working on selective fluorescence sensing of biological thiols using a BODIPY based bifunctional probe and the catalytic activity of short peptide amphiphile nanostructures that have implications on the origin of life under the supervision of Prof. Engin Umut Akkaya. In 2010, he spent six months at Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, the Netherlands, where he was working on the deformation and swelling of hydrogels at the molecular level using fluorescent probes. He joined Sijbren Otto`s group in September 2013 to pursue his PhD, working on self-replicating dynamic combinatorial libraries and chiral symmetry breaking using a urea-based synthetic replicators. For more information you can visit yigitaltay.com

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Meniz Tezcan was born in Edirne (Turkey) in 1988. She studied chemistry at Middle East Technical University in Ankara. During her undergraduate years, she spent 3 months at University of Ghent in Belgium where she was working on the synthesis of azetidine derivatives. She obtained her Msc degree in 2013, working on light triggered self-assembly and hydrogelation of Azobenzene bearing peptides under the supervision of Assist.Prof. Salih Ozcubukcu. She joined Sijbren Otto’s research group in October 2013 to pursue her PhD, working on exploring the use of dynamic combinatorial chemistry for identifying new self-replicating molecules.

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Andreas Hussain was born 1987 in Kassel (Germany). He started studying chemistry at the Christiana-Albertina-University of Kiel in 2008. He obtained his BSc in 2011 working on chiral α-substituted ω-enols and his MSc in 2013, working on ion-triplet-macrocycles under supervision of Prof. U. Luening. In 2014 he joined Sijbren Otto’s research group to pursue his PhD, working on far-from-equilibrium systems.

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Xiaoming Miao was born in 1986 in Shanxi Province and brought up in Gansu Province, China. He obtained his Master's degree at Nankai University in 2014, working on selenium-containing small molecular self-assemble peptides with redox properties advised by Prof. Zhimou Yang. He joined the Otto group in 2014 to start his PhD, working on template-directed surface functionalization of nanoparticles.

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Guillermo Monreal Santiago was born in 1992 in Madrid, Spain. He studied chemistry at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid until 2013, when he spent the last year of his degree as an Erasmus student in the KTH university (Stockholm, Sweden). There, he worked on the synthetic applications of enantiopure cyanohydrin derivatives in the laboratory of Prof. Christina Moberg. After receiving his BSc degree (with Honors), he continued his studies obtaining a MSc degree in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, performing his thesis in the laboratory of Bioorganometallic Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Mar Gómez Gallego. He joined the Otto group in October 2015 to pursue his PhD in self-synthetizing and stimuli-responsive hydrogels, under the Marie Curie network “ResMoSys”.

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Bin Liu was born in 1988 in Chongqin, China. He obtained his BS degree in chemistry at Hunan University of Science and Technology in 2012. After that, he received his MSc in 2015 with the thesis entitled "Design, Synthesis and Properties of N-Confused Porphyrin Derivatives" in the same university advised by Prof. Xiaofang Li. He moved to the University of Groningen in 2015 to pursue his PhD in the group of Sijbren Otto.

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Jim Ottele was born 1989 in Groningen. He studied chemistry at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and obtained his masters degree in Advanced Materials in 2016. His masters project was done in Sijbren Otto's research group, where he stayed to do his PhD.

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Ankush Sood was born in Shimla, India in 1994. He joined Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 2012 and received his bachelors and masters degree in chemistry (2017). He worked under the supervision of Prof. Gautam R. Desiraju towards both his bachelors and masters thesis, working on different aspects of crystal engineering including aniline-phenol recognition and competition and cooperation among supramolecular synthons. During this time he was also a visiting student in the group of Prof. Katja Loos in Groningen and Prof. E.W. Meijer in Eindhoven. He joined Otto group in April 2018 as a PhD student.

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Ivana Marić was born in Belgrade (Serbia) in 1991. She studied Chemistry at the University of Belgrade and graduated in 2015. In 2016 she received her MSc in Chemistry at the same university working with Prof. Radomir N. Saičić on the development of cyclization reactions catalyzed by gold and palladium complexes. During her studies she performed two internships, at Universidad Nacional del Sur (Argentina) and Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany). In November 2016 she joined the lab of Prof. Sijbren Otto to pursue her PhD degree in the field of Systems Chemistry. Her research focuses on incorporation of orthogonal dynamic covalent bonds into functional systems..

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Marcel Eleveld was born 1993 in Voorburg, The Netherlands. He was brought in Rijswijk until he moved to Groningen in 2011 to study Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. He is now working in the Otto-group on his research project on sustaining replicators in a flow regime.

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Paul Adamski was born in 1992 and raised on a small farm in southern Germany. He studied chemistry at the University of Würzburg where he obtained his B.Sc. in 2015, working on light driven water splitting in the group of Prof. Würthner. Subsequently, he completed a four month internship in the group of Prof. Bunz at the University of Heidelberg, engaging with N-Heteroacenes. For his master studies he returned to the University of Würzburg, where he graduated in 2018. During his Master studies he worked in the group of Florian Beuerle on the self-sorting and transformation of dynamic covalent cage compounds. In September 2018 he joined the Otto group to pursue his PhD.

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Ivar Dijck was born 1993 in Noordhorn. He studied Experimental Physics and Biology and gained his bachelor's in physics at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. He started with the Topmaster programme in Nanoscience in 2015. His research project is in Sijbren Otto's research group.

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Armin Kiani was born in Iran, where he obtained his undergraduate degree in analytical chemistry at Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST). In 2016, he moved to Stockholm, Sweden and joined the research group of Prof. Minna Hakkarainen at Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) as a researcher to work on the development of novel drug-eluting implants using 3D printing technology. He joined to Topmaster programme in nanoscience at the University of Groningen in 2017 and started his project in Sijbren Otto’s research group in July 2018. His research focuses upon studying the compartmentalization of self-replicating molecules.

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Patricia Wolf was born in Mödling (Austria) in 1995. She studied Chemistry at the University of Vienna and did her Bachelor thesis in computational chemistry about the "Photophysics of 2-Selenouracil" under the supervision of Prof. Leticia González. In 2017 she switched to the Technical University of Vienna to start her Master programme in synthetic chemistry where she did a 2 month research internship about the exploration of a cofactor recycling system in the group of Prof. Marko Mihovilovic. In August 2018 she started her Master thesis in Sijbren Otto's research group to study the formation of compartments, catalyzed by peptide-based self-replicators.

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Jasper Bos was born in Groningen in 1995 where he started studying chemistry in 2013. There he obtained his B.Sc. in 2017 working on creating a dissipative RNA system in the group of Prof. Sijbren Otto. For his master thesis he returned to the Otto group to work on the development of the catalytic properties of peptide based replicators.

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Luuk Koiter was born in 1994 in Zwolle. He started studying Chemistry in 2014 and obtained his bachelor degree in 2018 researching formanzanate ferrate complex catalized CO2 capture with epoxides. In september 2019 he started his master degree, also at the university of Groningen. For his master research he joined the Otto group in April 2019.

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Amara is a first year nanoscience student doing a short project in simulating the evolutionary dynamics of seed evolvable sytems of amino acid and nucleotide oligomer self replicators. She studied physics with a minor in philosophy on the bachelor level and has always been fascinated by the field of abiogenesis out of curiosity and in an endeavour to answer some of humanity's most nagging question - Where did we come from and what is life, consciousness and sapience?.

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Marc Geerts was born in Doetinchem, The Netherlands in 1996. He is studying Chemistry at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, where he has worked in the group of Prof. Roeland Nolte studying host-guest interactions in chiral supramolecular complexes. He joined the group of Sijbren Otto in June 2019 as a research intern to study self-replicating molecules in a continuous replication-destruction regime.

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Victor Verduijn was born in Sappemeer, the Netherlands, in 1998. He started studying Chemistry at the University of Groningen in 2016 and began his bachelor research project at the Otto Research Group in the spring of 2019. He is currently researching the feasibility of RNA oligomerization in complex coacervates as a means of pre-biotic compartmentalization. His research is performed under the supervision of Marcel Eleveld.

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