His research interests are the (bio)chemistry and structure of collagen, in particular the mechanisms of assembly, crosslinking and mineralization, as well as the translation of this fundamental knowledge to novel therapies in biomedicine. Sommerdijk obtained his PhD (cum laude) from Radboud University Nijmegen in 1995, in the field of supramolecular chemistry under the supervision of Profs B. Zwanenburg and R. Nolte.