Dr. van Hoof was born and raised in the Netherlands and first learned about molecular genetics during his undergraduate education at Wageningen Agricultural University. He decided to pursue molecular genetics for his graduate education at the DOE Plant Research Lab at Michigan State University. During Dr. van Hoof’s graduate work, he studied mRNA quality control and degradation pathways in plants.

After receiving his Ph.D., he continued studying mRNA degradation pathways, but switched to using yeast because of the better experimental tools available, and because yeast is more closely related to humans. These post-doctoral studies led him to the RNA exosome and other RNAses, and has been fascinated by the functions and specificity of RNases in RNA maturation and degradation ever since.