As a child Jaap was already intrigued by the invisible underlying properties of nature. As a child he tried to discern the willow warbler from the chiffchaff, but he also analysed the tables of ingredients and nutritional values of preserved foods on the breakfast table.

His fascination for biology led him to Wageningen University in 1992, where he graduated in plant cell biology in 1997 with a thesis on nuclear pore density during androgenesis in Brassica and an internship at the Electron Microscopy Unit of the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Maryland.  

In 2001 he obtained a PhD-degree on a study of water transport in cut chrysanthemums and the influence of air embolism. During his internship and the subsequent PhD-project he learned the ins and outs of Low Temperature Scanning Electron Microscopy (cryo-SEM) from three pioneers in the field: Bill Wergin, Eric Erbe, and Adriaan Van Aelst. Together with Adriaan he developed a very useful method to study wet and humid samples in cross-section, the so-called cryoplaning method.

In 2004, after a postdoc job at Wageningen University on germination of plant seeds, using high resolution SEM since 2001, he moved to Unilever R&D Vlaardingen, where he started as a research scientist in microscopy, doing both applied and fundamental research, in very diverse, multidisciplinary teams. Later, in 2010 he moved to the product structure department, taking part in research on new leads in foods and personal care applications. Working within Unilever was a great experience, both deepening a broad materials understanding (especially soft matter), and soft skills such as team leadership, strategic thinking, project management, quality, digitalisation, and cooperation in research ecosystems.