Born and raised in Rotterdam the Netherlands, I started studying medicine at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. During the first phase of my studies, I was able start my scientific career under the supervision of Markus Klimek at the department of Anaesthesia. After collaborating with the department of Neurosurgery by describing insular glioma patients, my scientific interests in neurology and intensive care were sparked.
To develop my scientific toolkit, I interrupted my studies medicine to obtain a master’s degree in clinical epidemiology at the Netherlands Institute of Health Sciences. I was able to use the developed skills in my field of interest by doing my scientific internship at the department of Public Health at the Erasmus MC, under supervision of both Markus Klimek as well as Hester Lingsma. During this internship, I collaborated within the CENTER-TBI project to study the variation of intubation in traumatic brain injury throughout europe, which eventually got published in the journal ‘Anaesthesia’.
During this period, I was also involved in helping coördinating the ROUTiNE-study, a prospective cohort study on in-hospital cardiac arrest.
Because of the multiple collaborations which were forged naturally, and because the many research questions that had arisen, I was able to continue my research as a PhD candidate at the department of Public Health, under supervision of Hester Lingsma, and Ewout Steyerberg. I was eager to improve medical decision making using sophisticated data science tools in the two acute diseases that I had come to study: traumatic brain injury and in-hospital cardiac arrest. To improve my knowledge about modern data science techniques, I collaborated with Ari Ercole, expert at these techniques in intensive care, at the department of Anaesthesia in Cambridge. Moreover, during my PhD period I developed statistical courses at the department of Biomedical Data Sciences at Leiden University, as well as for my own master. In short, my scientific interests had shifted from neurology and intensive care, towards modern methods for translating large observational data into knowledge. These interests form the basis of my PhD thesis, which I will defend in 2022.
Meanwhile, my studies medicine continued during the last phase of my PhD candidacy. My initial aim was to finish of my studies, and then pursue a methods-oriented scientific career. However, during my rotation at the department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, I was amazed by the diversity, thrill, and complexities of this specialty. Therefore, I am currently focusing on pursuing a career in Gynaecology and Obstetrics.
However, as can be read in my blogs for Faces of Science, I love doing research too much too quit academia. Luckily, there are many questions in the field of Gynaecology and Obstetric which spark my interest, and I am currently looking for collaborations to elaborate my ideas. In particular, I am interested in risk-stratification of women to allocate obstetrician- versus midwife-led care appropriately.
See all my publications here
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