The Nextstep Doctoral Programme celebrated the arrival of its first PhD student, Paul Grosskopf on 1 September 2025. Splitting his academic journey between the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble (France) and the FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg in Nuremberg (Germany), Paul’s research will pave the way for innovation in drug delivery systems and strengthen scientific collaboration across borders.

Paul’s PhD project, “Development of a combined SAXS/SANS/PCS analysis method for studies on the mesoscopic structure of LNP-based mRNA delivery systems”, will be supervised by Lionel Porcar and Miguel Gonzalez (ILL) and Tobias Unruh (FAU). His work will be conducted at instrument D22 at ILL, in close collaboration with a second PhD student based at FAU. Together, their research will advance the understanding and optimisation of lipid nanoparticle (LNP) formulations for biomedical applications.

Getting to Know Paul

We asked Paul a few questions about his academic background, what inspired him to pursue this path and what he hopes to experience during his time as a Nextstep PhD student.

Where did you complete your Master’s degree, and in what field?

I completed my M.Sc. in Chemistry with a focus on computational chemistry at Georg-August University in Göttingen, Germany.

What inspired you to pursue a PhD, and why this field and a large-scale facility?

During my studies, I developed skills that I hadn’t yet been able to fully apply in a research setting. My curiosity and desire to contribute to the scientific community inspired me to pursue a PhD. My interests in data fusion, statistics and machine learning drew me to this project, which combines SANS, SAXS, and PCS to investigate the structure of lipid nanoparticles. Large-scale facilities provide unique opportunities for experimentation and foster collaborations with people from diverse backgrounds, broadening perspectives and knowledge.

Beyond your research, what do you hope to experience during your PhD?

I hope to learn French and enjoy cultural exchange with my colleagues.

Supervisor’s View

We also spoke with Paul’s supervisor, Dr. Miguel Gonzalez, Staff Scientist in the ILL Scientific Computing Group,  to better understand the project’s objectives and potential impact.

Could you please give a brief overview of the PhD project? 

We are trying to better understand the mesoscopic structure of lipid nanoparticles used for mRNA drug delivery. As a single type of structural measurement is not enough to provide a full picture of both their structure and their size distribution, this requires the combination of different experimental measurements—in particular, small-angle neutron and x-ray scattering and photon correlation spectroscopy. The challenge thus consists in developing the necessary analysis tools to facilitate the combined analysis of results provided by these different experimental techniques, in order to identify the unique structural model that best describes the full dataset and the structure and size distribution of the lipid nanoparticles employed in different drug formulations. A second goal of this project is to benefit from recent advances in machine learning to accelerate and automate this process as much as possible, offering a way to understand the drug delivery process better and faster.

Why is this project interesting, and what potential real-world applications could it have?

The project is interesting because the use of lipid nanoparticles to deliver drugs is very recent and, therefore, the understanding of their structure–function relationship is still poor. We hope that this project will bring significant advances in this direction, helping the health industry to improve the stability, medical efficiency, and range of applications of lipid nanoparticle-based drug formulations.

Paul is the very first of 20 PhD candidates in the Nextstep Programme’s inaugural cohort, marking the beginning of an exciting journey. More students will be joining in October, and a second cohort is already planned for 2026, with new PhD projects to be announced in early spring — so stay tuned for what’s ahead!

The Nextstep local team greeted Paul on his arrival at the EPN Campus in Grenoble. From left to right: Yasmine Tam, Jeanette Godefroy, Gary Admans, Paul Grosskpof and Chiara Facoetti

Text by: Chiara Facoetti