Ronnie Hoekstra studied (Applied) Physics at the University of Groningen and did his PhD research in the group of Frits de Heer (AMOLF, Amsterdam). After his graduation in 1990 he received a personal EU grant and worked for three years as PostDoc on the Charge Exchange Diagnostics of the JET (Abingdon, UK) fusion reactor.  He continued his postdoctoral career in the surface science group of Werner Heiland (Osnabrück, Germany). In 1995 he joined the KVI (University of Groningen) as staff member. In 2004 he was appointed Full Professor and chaired the Atomic and Molecular Physics. His work was financed through many EU and EURATOM grants. For 6 years, he served as director of the International Research School for Fundamental and Applied Nuclear and Atomic Physics. In 2011/2012 he acted as scientific director of KVI, before moving in 2013 with his group to the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, where he is heading the Quantum Interactions and Structural Dynamics unit. He is also group leader at the Advanced Research Center for Nanolithopgraphy (ARCNL which is a public-private partnership established in 2014 by NWO, the universities UvA and VU and semiconductor equipment manufacturer ASML) of which he is one of the founding fathers. In 2022 the University of Groningen joined ARCNL as an associate partner. Ronnie Hoekstra’s work on Ion Interactions is co-embedded in the ARCNL research portfolio.