Adabella van der Zand (1978) studied Biochemistry at the University of Kent at Canterbury where she graduated cum laude in 2000. A Wellcome Trust Prize Ph.D. Studentship gave her the opportunity to work on membrane protein biogenesis at the University of Manchester (2004) under supervision of Prof. Colin Stirling. Since then worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Utrecht University in the lab of Prof. Henk Tabak and Prof. Ineke Braakman where she discovered a new framework for formation of intracellular compartments. Using peroxisome biogenesis as a model she demonstrated that the endoplasmic reticulum is step-wise remodelled into biochemically different vesicles that fuse to ultimately form a new peroxisomal compartment. In October 2012 she received a 1 yr fellowship from the Dutch Sector Plan Chemistry & Physics to start her own group addressing the mechanistic principles of compartment identity and the function of key protein and lipid components that orchestrate organellar architecture.