Mathijs was born and raised in the south west of The Netherlands and studied chemistry at the Radboud University, where he focused on hydrogels and supramolecular chemistry under supervision of prof. dr. Alan Rowan and prof. dr. Roeland Nolte. After graduating in 2016, he moved to the Eindhoven University of Technology for a PhD in the group of Bert Meijer. Here, he worked on model-driven understanding of competitive interactions of solvents and additives in supramolecular polymerizations. In 2021, Mathijs changed fields as he joined the lab of Jörn Piel at the Intsitute of Microbiology at ETH Zurich. During his time at ETH, he developed data-driven workflows for natural product discovery and engineering.
In January 2024, Mathijs joined the Radboud University and Big Chemistry consortium as a group leader. Merging his prior experience in supramolecular chemistry and protein engineering, he aims to develop new methods to develop peptide-based materials for applications in biomedicine and materials science.