Mischa Bonn (1971) studied Physical Chemistry at the University of Amsterdam, where he graduated with honors on the subject of dynamic light scattering from colloidal suspensions. During his chemistry studies, he also studied philosophy, specializing in logics. Subsequently, he did his PhD at the FOM-Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF, www.amolf.nl), in a joint project of profs. Kleyn (AMOLF, now Leiden), van Santen (TUE, http://www.tak.chem.tue.nl/ ) and Lagendijk (AMOLF, now Twente). The subject of his thesis research was time-resolved (picosecond) vibrational spectroscopy on zeolite catalysts. After his graduation at the Technical University in Eindhoven in 1996, Mischa started a post-doc in the group of Martin Wolf at the Fritz-Haber Institute in Berlin (now Free University Berlin, http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/~mwolf/newfemtos/welcome.html ), on time-resolved spectroscopy on metal surfaces in Ultra-High Vacuum. Also during this period, several workvisits (totalling ~ 6 months) were made to the group of Tony Heinz (Columbia University, New York, http://www.ee.columbia.edu/people/heinz.php3 ), where Mischa was involved in the construction and use of a time-resolved THZ spectrometer ( http://wwwchem.leidenuniv.nl/surfcat/html/THz.html ).
Mischa has been employed in Leiden since 1999, and has received two personal grants (one from the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and one from the NWO-vernieuwingsimpuls).