In 2016, because of my interest in biology and chemistry, I started with the Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences Bachelor at Leiden University. After completing the bachelor and having found that I really enjoyed the computational research side of drug discovery I decided to focus my master's program on this field, doing the Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences Master at Leiden University. During the master's, I performed a 9-month research internship at the LACDR with the group of Prof.dr. Gerard van Westen developing a new tool for de novo drug design. Afterward, I also did an internship at the LIACS under the supervision of Dr. Lu Cao, working on image analysis methods for the characterization of cardiotoxicity. After finishing my master’s degree, I decided to start a Ph.D. position at the LACDR under the supervision of the aforementioned Prof.dr. Gerard van Westen. I will be working on the Virtual Human Platform for safety assessment. This project aims to do animal-free predictions of the toxicity of novel chemicals using computational methods. I will specifically be looking into modeling ligand-target interactions, in order to bridge the gap between the exposure in the body to a chemical and potential adverse outcomes.

Publications