Wiep Smits MSc, PhD

Wiep Klaas Smits obtained his cum laude master’s degree in Biology from the University of Groningen in The Netherlands in 2002. During his PhD, he studied phenotypic heterogeneity and the regulation of natural competence in the gram-positive bacterium Bacillus subtilis in the laboratory of Prof. Oscar Kuipers at the same institution. After he was awarded his PhD degree cum laude in 2007, he joined the laboratory of Prof. Alan Grossman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States as a postdoctoral fellow, where he studied DNA replication initiation in B. subtilis. In 2010, he joined the group of Prof. Ed Kuijper at the Leiden University Medical Center and shortly thereafter obtained grants to establish an independent research line on the molecular biology of the enteropathogen Clostridium difficile. He was promoted to assistant professor in 2016.