We love doing bio-centric, interdisciplinary research. The mesmerising level of self-organization in living cells makes biological soft matter particularly exciting to us. Since cells are so complex, we have a strong liking for bottom-up biology, i.e., studying purified cellular components. We do so in a controlled manner using a variety of self-developed microfluidic systems. Our research ranges from building synthetic cells to biosensing using liquid crystals, fostering numerous collaborations along the way.