Manager of the R&D department at Bruker AXS in Delft
The Hague Area, Netherlands
- Current
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- Manager R&D at Bruker AXS
- Past
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- Application software engineer at Nonius BV
- Postdoc at European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Heidelberg
- PhD student (AIO) at Utrecht University
- Education
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- Universiteit Utrecht
- Recommended
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7 people have recommended Rob - Connections
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connections
- Industry
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- Websites
Rob Hooft’s Summary
Manager of a diverse group of professionals. Motivating leader.
Originally I was educated as a physical chemist with specialization in molecular structure. I have a broad experience in science. I also have ample experience in programming scientific algoritms as well as user interfaces, and in software architecture.
Rob Hooft’s Specialties:
Acquiring funding for research through subsidies,
Maintaining a network with University research groups,
Presenting results inside and outside of the company
Rob Hooft’s Experience
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Manager R&D
Bruker AXS
(Public Company; BRKR; Research industry)
April 2001 — Present (8 years 4 months)
Providing guidance to a diverse group of professionals in the development of single-crystal X-ray diffraction systems.
Responsibilities: Continued responsibilities as Applications software developer. Lead a development department numbering between 5 and 12 engineers. Represent R&D in the management team of the Delft location. Lead selected R&D projects. Be a partner in government subsidized collaborative scientific developments with universities and other companies. Maintain the departmental ISO 9001 documentation. Advise the local management on IT issues.
Since April 2004: additional responsibilities as "Director of Life Science R&D": Inform the CEO and board of directors monthly of world wide progress in R&D inside the product line. Represent R&D in the global product line management team meetings for single crystal diffraction. Inspire an international team of software engineers in different locations. Make a yearly presentation to the scientific advisory board of the product line.
Accomplishments:
● Coordinated a transition towards a LEAN development style.
● Improved collaboration between development sites by installing a search engine and shared access to documents.
● Introduced a metric measuring effective hours of the team; achieving scores >45%, 2x the average in the literature.
● Recruited seven new team members (internationally) that brought new experience into the group.
● Created yearly budget of 1M€ including materials, depreciations, salaries and subsidies.
● Led the team that developed the most intense affordable and award winning X-ray source on the market.
● Instated a pro-active management style that was copied partly by others, inspiring team members and colleagues.
● Provided motivation to the development group through several company reorganizations.
● Minimized the budget required for IT through deployment of open-source services, e.g. for issue tracking. -
Application software engineer
Nonius BV
(Mechanical or Industrial Engineering industry)
September 1997 — March 2001 (3 years 7 months)
Responsibilities: Set up application software for Nonius new line of CCD diffraction systems. Collaborated with Utrecht University to set up a contingency software project to prevent depending on package with a single (difficult) supplier. Provided customer support for difficult problems.
Accomplishments:
● Wrote application software that is respected as the most easy to use software for single crystal diffraction to date.
● Was more productive than competition with 5x more programmers using efficient programming techniques.
● Protected a method by authoring a patent documenting an invention done in collaboration with Utrecht University.
● Demonstrated to customers that the company was a valuable scientific partner in demonstrations on shows.
● Developed groundbreaking new algorithms starting from knowledge from scientific papers only.
● Wrote a break-through scientific paper that resulted in invitations to speak at five international conferences.
● Designed the architecture of major software packages sold with Bruker AXS Single Crystal instruments. -
Postdoc
European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Heidelberg
(Research industry)
July 1993 — August 1997 (4 years 2 months)
Responsibilities: Write verification tools for protein structures, these tools are included into the WHAT IF program. Collaborate on other aspects of the molecular modeling software WHAT IF, including the 3D graphics engines, the user interface and the documentation.
Accomplishments:
● Made protein modeling easier by creating databases of protein structural features and protein structure quality.
● Warned other scientists for the importance of quality checks by presenting results in Nature, cited 950 times.
● Kept other scientists informed by presenting results at several international scientific conferences.
● Achieved recognition by writing 4 scientific articles (as first author) describing newly developed methods.
● Helped crystallographers test the quality of their results by building a web service with the software. -
PhD student (AIO)
Utrecht University
(Educational Institution; Research industry)
July 1989 — June 1993 (4 years)
Research the structure/activity relationships of sweet tasting compounds.
Accomplishments:
● Developed new (parallelized) software for modelling flexible molecules using molecular mechanics.
● Developed new software for modelling flexible molecules using molecular dynamics.
● Wrote a chapter in a book on sweet taste chemoreception.
● Solved a number of small molecule organic crystal structures.
Rob Hooft’s Education
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Universiteit Utrecht
Master , Chemistry , 1985 — 1989
Studied the Maximum Entropy method in X-ray crystallography.
Additional Information
Rob Hooft’s Websites:
Rob Hooft’s Interests:
Becoming an effective manager, Presenting (science or business), Motivating people, Science education, Science writing, New technology, Sustainable technology, Crystallography, Life Sciences, (physical) Chemistry, Computing, Open-source computing, Scientific computing, Python Programming, Photography
