Kim Bonger is Professor in Chemical Biology at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Kim obtained her MSc degree in organic chemistry from the Free University in Amsterdam in 2002. In 2008 she completed her PhD in (bio)organic chemistry from Leiden University working under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Gijs van der Marel and Prof. Dr. Hermen Overkleeft on the design, synthesis and evaluation of dimeric ligands for G-protein coupled receptors involved in human reproduction. Starting in 2009, Kim switched fields to molecular biology and cell biology where she spends almost four years as a postdoc with Prof. Dr. Thomas Wandless at Stanford University working on molecular tools to control protein stability. In 2013 she returned to the Netherlands as an assistant professor in Chemical Biology at the Radboud University in Nijmegen where she was promoted to associate professor in 2021. In 2024 she moved to Leiden University where she was promoted to full professor in 2025 to pursue her research in Chemical Biology & Immunology. Her research focuses on the development of novel bioorthogonal chemistry and chemoenzymatic methods for imaging, target discovery and precision medicine. In addition, she develops molecular probes and explores new chemical biology strategies to understand and modulate the cellular mechanisms involved in (auto)immune diseases.
