March 2025 – Present
Postdoctoral Researcher
– SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, Institute for Genomics in Health, POP-GEM lab (NY, USA) – remote
– University Medical Center Groningen, University Center of Psychiatry, Van Loo lab (NL) – host institute
In my current work I research the genetic background of psychiatric disorders, focussing on Major Depressive Disorder. I focus on trans-ancestry datasets to increase our understanding of these disorders whilst improving equitable and diverse genetics research, for accessible research outputs for all.
Outreach:
I am Chair of the UMCG Postdoc council, which advocates for improved working conditions for postdocs and fascilitates information and career opportunities for postdocs at the UMCG. More information on the council and my work as chair is described in this news-post.
In addition, I serve as the Data-Access Commitee – liaison within the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) Cross-Population Working group, fascilitating communication and proper data access practices to empower inclusive research across the PGC.
Nov 2020 – Dec 2024
Doctoral Researcher
Technical University of Munich (DE)
I researched epistatic effects as part of the genetic aetiology of psychiatrixc disorders and comorbidities for my thesis titled: Complex Polygenic Pathway Interactions of Psychiatric Disorders and Comorbidities.
Daily supervision by Dr. Na Cai at Helmholtz Pioneer Campus, Germany.
TUM First supervisor: Prof. Dr. Bertram Müller-Myshok
Tum Secondary supervisor: Dr. Bastian Rieck
Extracurriculars:
– Active member of the Doctoral Initiative (DINI) at Helmholtz Munich. Responsibilities included: Coordinator of Mental Health Awareness Month 2024; founding, design and content creation for quarterly newsletter; event organisation and Welcome Team.
Sep 2018 – Aug 2020
Master of Science: Molecular and Cellular Life Sciences
University of Utrecht (NL)
Main Research Project:
Analysis of Metagenomic Chromosome Conformation Capture methods and MetaTOR pipeline under supervision of Dr. Giannis Stringlis and Dr. Ronnie de Jonge at the Plant-Microbe Interactions group headed by Prof. Dr. Corné Pieterse.
Minor: ‘Applied Data Science’
Thesis (3-week literature review): ‘Omnigenic extistential crisis: looking for validation’. Supervised by Dr. Patrick Deelen and Dr. Jeroen de Ridder.
Extracurriculars
– Chair, secretary and 2nd violinist for the Kunstorchestra
– Commissary Extern for content creation, external communication and webdesign of KOSMU
Sep 2015 – Jul 2018
Bachelor of Science: Life Science and Technology
I completed my Bachelor Studies in Life Science and Technology (biology) at the University of Groningen, Netherlands.
I majored in Molecular Life Sciences and followed a minor in Behavioral Neuroscience. One course on compatuational genetics was an internship supervised by Dr. Harm-Jan Westra within the Franke Lab me and a peer student looked into the predictive power of methylation-Quantitative-Trait-Loci to predict gene expression applied in Python.
My thesis ‘The molecular mechanism of surfactin immunity in B. subtilis‘ was done under supervision of Prof. Dr. Dirk-Jan Scheffers
Extracurriculars:
– Secretary and Editor of the Lifeline Magazine of GLV Idun
– Website commitee member and content creator for the Surface website.
Sep 2009 – May 2015
Pre-University Education
I completed my pre-university (high school) education, (VWO in Dutch, more on that here) at the Nuborgh College Lambert Franckens in Elburg, The Netherlands.
The second half of which I followed the tracks of both Nature & Health, and Nature & Technics. For my final profile report I conducted a survey under students and interviewed staff to judge how well the school was suited to cope with a government-required change that would increase the placement of specific children with special needs into the regular classrooms. It was titled ‘is the NCLF Autism Spectrum -Proof?’