- PhD, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2006)
- Marie Curie post-doctoral fellow, National institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, London (2006-2008)
- Research group leader, Faculty of Physics, Georg August University, Göttingen (since 2008)

Major Research Interests
In our laboratory we develop and use atomic force microscopy techniques to study biological systems. To generate a topographical image an atomic force microscope (AFM) employs a very sharp probe to mechanically scan a sample. When used for biological objects the challenge is to obtain an as high as possible resolution without disturbing the relatively fragile protein, DNA or lipid samples.
In combination with other biophysical techniques, we use the ability of AFM to obtain nanometer resolution on 'living' samples to image single kinesin motor proteins that are involved in intracellular transport. Our aim is to understand how traffic in the crowded environment of the cell can lead to traffic jams and how these can be avoided. In addition we use the probe of the AFM to purposely deform macromolecular complexes, such as viruses and cells, in order to relate their mechanical response to their architecture.


Homepage Department/Research Group
http://www.dpi.physik.uni-goettingen.de/en/forschung/dr-schaap.html/

Selected Recent Publications
- Schaap, I. A. T., Hoffmann, B., Carrasco, C., Merkel, R., Schmidt, C. F. (2007) Tau protein binding forms a 1 nm thick layer along protofilaments without affecting the radial stability of microtubules. J. Struct. Biol.158, 282-292.

- Carrasco, C., Carreira, A., Schaap, I. A. T., Mateu, M. G., Gómez-Herrero, J., de Pablo, P. J. (2006) DNA-mediated anisotropic mechanical reinforcement of a virus by its genomic DNA. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U S A. 103, 13706-13711.