The formation of ice in cells, tissues, and other (non-)living soft materials is often destructive beyond repair. Yet, there are many species (fish, bacteria, insects) that have developed effective coping strategies to mitigate freeze damage. These often revolve around ice-interactive materials that can manipulate ice nucleation and growth. My group studies and creates a variety of natural and synthetic ice-interactive materials to elucidate how and why ice-interactive materials bind ice crystals and to relate molecular features to adsorption behavior and activity. We aim to establish a solid mechanistic understanding of how ice-interactive materials work and to develop novel material concepts for cryoprotective agents and crystal growth modifiers that can be utilized in biomedical and other applications.[1] In this talk, I will present highlights of our work in chemical cryobiology, where our molecular systems engineering approach interfaces with our fundamental interests in the chemistry of life. In particular, I will showcase recent research on native ice-binding proteins and synthetic biomaterials for improved cryopreservation, vitrification, and cold perfusion, including high-resolution imaging of individual ice-binders on ice using super-resolution microscopy[2] and de novo designed ice-interactive proteins. [3, 4]

References
[1] I. K. Voets, Soft Matter 13 (2017) 4808.
[2] R. P. Tas, M. M. R. M. Hendrix, I. K. Voets, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 120 (2023) , e2212456120.
[3] R. J. de Haas, R. P. Tas, D. van den Broek, C. Zheng, H. Nguyen, A. Kang, A. K. Bera, N. P. King, I. K. Voets, R. de Vries, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 120 (2023) e2220380120
[4] R. J. de Haas; H. Pyles; T. F. Huddy; J. van Ossenbruggen; C. Zheng; D. van den Broek; A. Carr; A. K. Bera; A. Kang; E. Brackenbrough; E. Joyce; B. Sankaran; D. Baker; I. K. Voets; R. de Vries, bioRxiv 2025, 2025.03.09.642278.