Meet your team of enthusiastic life science professionals

A customer-driven approach to give you the best experience possible

With our international and open-minded team, we develop innovative and ingenious designs in cooperation with our users, we provide the most user-friendly upgrade technology for microscopes. With the passion we have for science, we create value for all our stakeholders.

Our mission & vision

At Confocal.nl, our mission is to improve the microscopy experience of researchers. We want to help researchers make breakthrough discoveries by offering them clever designed imaging solutions. With the passion we have for science, we aim to create value for all our stakeholders. Confocal.nl caters to the needs of scientists and microscopists, by developing solutions that were not yet available in the world of microscopy. We are a fast growing and dynamic international company. We create innovative and clever design technologies for you, built to be the most user-friendly solution out there, continuously challenging the microscopy market.

Our core values

Curious
We look beyond what’s known to innovate and find the best solutions.

Proactive
We are in constant movement to strive for the best solutions for our customers.

Cooperative
Each team member has an added value and together we strive for the best experience for our users.

Customer focused
We ensure that customers have a pleasant experience with us and our solutions.

Meet the team

Our international team is composed of pro-active life science professionals passionate about microscopy. We are all committed to Confocal.nl’s goals and we keep a customer focused attitude.

Would you like to meet us? You can ask us any questions you have during our walk-in demo sessions each Thursday. Sign up for the next one, we’ll see you soon!

Pim Vos

Chief Executive Officer

Pim Joined Confocal.nl in 2020 and has multiple years of experience in managing businesses in life sciences, with roles in R&D, sales, international marketing and general management. He has an MSc in Medical Biology. Pim especially likes outdoor life and has lived in several countries throughout his career.

What he likes most about Confocal.nl?
“That our team always aims to simplify and improve the imaging experience for scientists as users, across the world.”

Erik Manders

Co-founder and the inventor

Erik is a recognized scientist in the field of microscopy and optics. He obtained his PhD in Theoretical Physics in 1994 at The University of Amsterdam (UvA) and did successful postdocs at The University of Stockholm and Oxford. Thereafter, he came back to UvA and worked for more than 16 years as an assistant professor. Erik contributed to the microscopy community with discoveries like Mander’s coefficient, used for colocalization of biomolecules, and the RCM principle. In his spare time, Erik can be found sailing on the ocean.

When asked “What drove you to develop the RCM?”, Erik replies:
“I wanted to build an optics-only microscope with higher sensitivity and resolution than standard confocals to avoid image processing. The image that you get on the screen is a direct image of your sample, there is nothing in between, only light. This gives biologists more control of the imaging.”

Paul

Chief Financial Officer

Peter Drent

Founder and Sales & Marketing Manager

Peter has a background in biology and dedicated the beginning of his professional career to research. After that period he joined Nikon where he worked 25 years and was responsible for sales, service, marketing and support activities of Nikon microscopes business in Europe, Russia and Africa.

Mariliis Tark-Dame

Chief Operating Officer

Mariliis is a successful grant writer, and has brought Confocal.nl’s financing to a number of new products in development. She obtained her PhD in genetics at the University of Tartu, Estonia (2009) and worked as a postdoc at the University of Amsterdam for several years, conducting research in the field of genome architecture, dynamics and mutagenesis. She enjoys an active lifestyle, new challenges and good food.

What do you enjoy most about working at Confocal.nl?
“I love the potential our products have to support scientists in their research. I love structure and organization, and the signs of success of our team and our customers.”

The dawn of light

History
Confocal.nl was founded in 2016, by Erik Manders and Peter Drent. The concept of RCM was born three years earlier from a PhD project at the University of Amsterdam, financed by Dutch Research Council NWO through their STW Perspectief.
Erik and his team of optics researchers with Giulia de Luca as lead researcher developed the innovative and breakthough re-scan confocal technique. The concept and outcomes were published in 2013 (De Luca et al., 2013).
In 2016, with the support from UvA Ventures & Holding, Confocal.nl was founded to commercialize RCM. Hereafter, microscopy facilities around the world started incorporating our technology, which stimulated the growth of Confocal.nl.

A second milestone for Confocal.nl was facilitated by Value Creation Capital (VCC) in 2018. Their investment made it possible to expand our team and pursue further product and technology development. In 2021, this has led to a successful launch of both an improved RCM product and also ‘NL5’, a line scanning confocal microscope.
The growing position of Confocal.nl in biology science, made ECFG Venture Capital to join us, investing in scaling the company for global growth and further technology development.
Currently, UvA Ventures, VCC and ECFG are our main investors. We are continuously working on progression and technology improvement to enrich the microscopy market with more innovative solutions for breakthrough science.

Awards

Over the years, Confocal.nl received financing for product development from several local european funds: Eurostars Eureka, RvO Innovatiekrediet, Innovatiefonds Noord Holland. We are actively seeking cooperation through public-private consortia for the application
of our technologies. Confocal.nl was recognised with the Academic Startup Award and with the Microscopy Today Innovation Award 2020.

Microscopy Today 2020 innovation Award

2019 Academic startup

2020 EIT-Health Catapult semifinalist

Our partners

We have selected the best components in the market to offer an optimal imaging solution, which can be adapted to the needs of each individual customer.