Professional Career

I started my academic career in the Bachelor Biomedical Sciences at the University of Amsterdam, which I graduated from in 2022. As a part of my Bachelor’s degree, I also did an internship in the Electron microscopy center Amsterdam at the Amsterdam medical center, where I focused on examining the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in several tissues from severe COVID-19 patients.

During my Bachelor’s, I gained a lot of interest in the immune system and its interaction with pathogens, which is why I subsequently followed the Immunology & Infection track within the Biomedical Sciences Master. I also did two immunology-related internships as a part of my Master’s degree, where I gained a lot of passion for B cell immunology specifically. My first Master’s internship was carried out in the research department of Sanquin. In this project, I studied the effect of various immunologically-relevant stimuli and cells on B cell differentiation in an in vitro culture system. For my second Master’s internship, I went abroad to the University of Birmingham to study the capability of a novel mouse model, which produces fully human antibodies, to induce B cell-mediated immune responses against after immunization. After completing both of these internships, I successfully graduated cum laude from my Master’s Biomedical Sciences in 2024.

As of April 2025, I am a PhD candidate in both the Biosystems Data Analysis group at the SILS and the medical priority Immunity & Inflammation at Sanquin. My PhD project is a collaboration between both groups to study B cell differentiation in-depth, combining knowledge of big data analysis approaches in the BDA group with practical experience with in vitro/ex vivo experimental approaches within the research department of Sanquin.