Previous board members

Hello! My name is Noor and I am a PhD student at the Leiden University Center for Infectious Disease (LUCID) since 2022. I am a fundamental researcher interested in parasite-host interactions and parasite glycosylation. In particular, I study human parasites causing schistosomiasis, hoping to deliver a small contribution towards understanding glycan-mediated immune responses in this poverty-related tropical disease.

Within LAP, I take on the role of treasurer. Besides, I hope to be able to represent the interests of PhD students within LUMC and to inspire PhD students to enrich their PhD trajectory with lectures, workshops and social events.

Hi! I’m Kiki, a PhD candidate in the Department of Anesthesiology, where my research focuses on pain management through drugs and the effect of drugs on the eyes.

As chair of LAP, my mission is to help create a strong, supportive PhD community within the LUMC. Doing a PhD can be incredibly rewarding, but it also comes with challenges—and that’s where LAP comes in. We’re here to connect PhD candidates with each other, not only through fun and social activities, but also through informative talks and workshops that support your professional and personal development.

If you have any questions, ideas, or are in need of support, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I hope to meet you at one of our events!

Hello! I am Alice, currently in my second (almost third) year doing my PhD at the Center for Innovation in Medical Education. As part of my PhD, I study quality of online interaction and I aim to develop interventions that improve the online interaction between students and students, and between students and teachers. In addition to doing a PhD in Medical Education, I have a background in psychology and neuropsychology, which I studied in Romania (where I am also from) and in Maastricht.

I joined LAP as a general board member, hoping to represent the interests of PhD candidates across the LUMC. I am involved in various tasks such as updating the newsletter and the website. Most importantly, I am committed to contributing to an inclusive and safe environment, and I hope to be able to bring my expertise in education, psychology, and social interaction to good use.

Hi! I am a PhD candidate at the department of Otorhinolaryngology and Head & Neck Surgery. In my project I try to mimic hearing loss with mini inner ear structures made from stem cells. Maybe one day we could bring the day when you didn’t have to shout “what did you say?”. Besides experimenting in the lab, I also reflect on the ethical consequences of these new biomedical technologies.

As LAP chair my goal is to make the PhD life at the LUMC a little bit better for everyone. If you have any ideas for improvements, issues or complaints don't hesitate to contact us! I look forward to meeting you at one of our events!

Hello! I am Dejvid, a second year PhD candidate in the department of Thrombosis and Haemostasis. My project focuses currently on computational approaches to explore the interaction of factor X with small molecule inhibitors. The overall goal of this project is restoring blood coagulation in individuals treated with factor Xa-inhibiting anticoagulants.

Aside from being treasurer, my role in the LAP board is to organize events together with the other board members and hopefully representing international students the best I can. See you in our next event!

I'm Simone, a third-year Ph.D. candidate in anesthesiology, deeply committed to advancing patient safety and healthcare practices. Beyond my academic pursuits, I'm actively involved in the LAP as a PR representative, promoting program initiatives and events. Equally dedicated to nurturing strong social connections among my fellow Ph.D. candidates at LUMC, I recognize the potential for collaboration and shared personal development. As such, I've taken on the responsibility of keeping our social networks dynamic and engaging. Please don't hesitate to reach out and connect with me at any time.

Hi, my name is Elissa and I am a second year PhD candidate at the department of Cardiology. My research focuses on the (long-term) cardiovascular side effects of cancer therapies, especially radiotherapy and immunotherapy.

My role in the LAP, as part of the promotion team, is to write the newsletter, keep the socials up to date and organize events. I hope to meet you all soon during one of our LAP events!

Hey there! My name is Gregory and I am a first year PhD candidate at the department of Rheumatology. I am a medical doctor and was born and raised on the island of Curaçao.

My research focuses on rheumatoid arthritis and more specifically on optimizing therapeutic options for undifferentiated arthritis. One of the aspects of this research project is running two national randomized clinical trials.

I have the pleasure of being the current LAP chair, LAP represents all LUMC PhD candidates to formal organizations, both within and outside of the LUMC. Next to this we also organize lectures, educational, social and networking events on a monthly basis.

I really hope to see you at one of our events and if you have any ideas, feedback or questions, please do not hesitate to contact me!

Hi, my name is Vesna. I am fourth-year PhD candidate at the department of Radiation oncology. My project focuses on MR imaging and optimization of proton therapy of bone sarcomas (chordomas and chondrosarcomas) of the axial skeleton. This is an ongoing prospective study in collaboration with the recently opened proton therapy center in Delft – HollandPTC.

As a general member of the LAP board, I play a part in organizing the events and representing the international students.

Hi all! I am Lente, a second year PhD student at the Department of Surgery and Transplant Centre. My research focuses on renal metabolism and ischemia/reperfusion injury in the context of transplantation. I am currently involved in some research projects regarding proteomics/metabolomics abroad, but I will soon be back at the LUMC.

I joined LAP as a general board member since I would love to become more involved in uniting PhD researchers at the LUMC, and I feel that LAP is a perfect platform for achieving this. Hope to see you at our events!

Hi! My name is Elise van Wijk and I am a PhD candidate at the Center for Innovation in Medical Education. My PhD project focuses on the effects and impact of assessments on learning behaviour of medical students. More specifically, I study a new type of question as alternative to multiple choice questions (the very short answer question), feedback use and adaptive assessment.

As the Secretary of the board I am there to answer all your PhD-related questions! Furthermore, I stay in contact with other PhD-organizations, the Graduate School and the dean. I am also representing the PhD students of the LUMC in the meetings with Boerhaave Nascholing (Continuing Medical Education). Feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions or concerns!

I am currently a third-year PhD candidate at the departments of Medical Oncology and Surgery and my PhD focuses on treatment outcomes that are relevant to older patients with breast cancer.

I have the pleasure of currently being the LAP chair. LAP represents all PhD candidates to formal organizations, both within and outside of the LUMC. We also organize several educational and social/networking events and lectures. I really hope to see you on one of these events. If you have any ideas, feedback or questions, please contact me!

Hi, my name is Carlijn and I am a PhD-student at the department of Endocrinology. Currently, I am focusing on the mechanism of brown adipose tissue and gut hormones as a treatment for people living with obesity. In the LAP board, I am head of the events committee. Together with other members of the board, we organize events for PhD student in the LUMC. We love to collaborate with other committees to plan the best events. If you have a great idea to improve the life of a PhD student, a topic for a next event or want to work together, contact us! Hope to see you all soon.

Hello everyone, my name is Thaïs and I was born and raised on sunny Curaçao! I am a second-year PhD candidate at the LUMC. My research is on the departments of Medical oncology and Interventional radiology and is focused on novel treatments for metastasized Uveal Melanoma, a very rare type of melanoma. My role in LAP consists of representing both local and international PhD students and helping with event organizations. But most importantly keeping our website up to date.

Is there anything you are missing on the website? Or ofcourse if there is anything else on your mind you want to talk to us about, feel free to contact us via LAP@lumc.nl!

With a background in microfluidics and cell biology, I am currently pursuing a PhD in Cell & Chemical Biology at LUMC. I will now be investigating the effects TGF-β signalling and extracellular matrix stiffness have on collective cell migration. My research will particularly focus on the metastatic cascade and invasion of cells into healthy tissues before intravasation.

When I am not working, you can find me procrastinating (actually I don’t think that’s my free time), cooking or working out to burn the calories I cooked up. You can find my blog on disseminating cancer research at curiousaboutcancer.com or find me sharing quality memes on instagram.com/bouncii99.

Hi ! I’m Alice and I am PhD candidate at the rheumatology department. My project focuses on the role of IgA auto-antibodies in the modulation of the immune response in the context of rheumatoid arthritis with a special focus on lipid mediators.

As LAP member my role is to represent international students in the LUMC and to take part in event organization together with the other members of the event committee. Hope to see you at our next events !

Merian is a PhD-student in the laboratory of Respiratory Cell Biology and Immunology and the Pulmonology department. She works on understanding the mechanisms behind Radiation Induced Lung njury in stage III NSCLC-patients with patient-derived epithelial and lungcancer organoids. This study is called the PRIOR-study and she works both in the lab as well as with the patients involved in the study. You can usually find her somewhere between the B and D areas in the LUMC, carrying around a lot of stuff between the laboratory and the outpatient clinic.

In the LAP she is the chair of the board, a very rewarding experience. It gives an insight in the inner workings of the LUMC and loads of opportunities to help all the PhD-students at the LUMC. If you have any ideas on how to improve the PhD-life in the LUMC, have issues or complaints, do not hesitate to contact her or LAP, because we are here for you!

Hi! My name is Dorine van Staalduinen and I am a PhD candidate at both the Medical Decision Making department in the LUMC as the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs in The Hague (Leiden University). For my PhD project, I study the governance aspects of the implementation process of Value-Based Healthcare (VBHC). Among other things, I want to determine what factors influence the effectiveness of interprofessional collaboration in VBHC care pathways and how we can increase the effectiveness of this interprofessional collaboration.

I am part of the LAP event committee and together with the other event-members we organize events for the PhD students in the LUMC. Hope to see you soon at one of our events!

Hi, my name is Daniele and I am a second year PhD candidate in the group of Molecular Epidemiology in the LUMC. My project focuses on constructing predictive models for health and aging, using molecular measurements in multiple -omic levels (i.e. metabolomics, epigenomics, etc.), with the aim of having a data-driven view on the inter-individual variability of the immune and metabolic system.

My role in LAP consists in organizing the events for the PhD students in the LUMC through the year and also to represent the international PhD candidates in the hospital. I look forward to meeting you during future events!

Hello, my name is Naomi and I am a PhD candidate at the pulmonary department. I am almost finished with my first year. Currently I focus on treatment options for alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency. A rare hereditary pulmonary and liver disease. At the moment the therapeutic options for this disease are very limited. I hope the clinical trials that I work on will change this soon.
What the future holds for other projects during my PhD is not completely set in stone but it might also involve some work in the laboratory.

In the LAP board I am part of the event committee. Together with the other members of this committee I organize events for the PhD students in the LUMC. I hope I will meet you soon at one of the events!

Ziena Abdulrahman is a PhD candidate investigating tumour immunology and immunotherapy, especially in Human Papillomavirus (HPV) associated gynaecological tumours. Her focus is on the immune microenvironment and its potential as predictive biomarker for response to different kinds of immunotherapy. She is the general board member in the LAP board, striving to improve the representation of PhD candidates on all levels, and organize activities to broaden their horizon and help them ahead in their careers.

My name is Enrico de Koning, I am a PhD-student from the Cardiology department, currently in my second year. My project focuses on the triage and logistics in acute cardiac care aiming to decrease the number of patients unnecessarily transported to the hospital.

In LAP I am head of the event committee and am therefore responsible for the organization of events for all PhD-students in the LUMC. If you have any new ideas or feedback from past events, please do not hesitate to contact me! I look forward to seeing you at one of our events.

Hi! I am Aline, PhD candidate at the department of Medical Microbiology. For my PhD project I try to predict viral infections in kidney transplant recipients. In LAP, I am in currently in charge of PR together with Ed. I make the posters, send out the monthly newsletter (send lap@lumc.nl a mail if you don’t receive it yet!), and share all important info on our social media.

LAP is for me a very educational experience. I have already learned a lot, not only about outreach, design and PR, but also about working in a team and learning the processes of the bigger organisations we come into contact with (the LUMC, PNN). And of course, it is great to get to know your fellow PhDs from other departments. We have borrels together which is a lot of fun :)

Hi! My name is Ed, I am a 2nd year PhD candidate at the Medical Statistics department. My project focuses on methods for dealing with missing data in the field of survival analysis, with applications in stem cell transplantation studies.

My time with LAP begun mainly with the development of this website, and am now responsible for the financial side of things as Treasurer.

(2016-2019)

Olá! Hi there! My name is Natacha and I was a PhD student at Medical Microbiology department working on The quest for broad-spectrum Coronavirus inhibitors. I was part of the of the Events and International Committees. Back then, I organized educational (lectures and workshops) and network events for PhD students. I can remember big successes such as PhD day about (R)evolution in science (in 2018) about artificial intelligence or career event (in 2019). Besides, some of my tasks involved helping PhD students with their integration at LUMC (more related with International students) and training problems. I hope you can find in LAP an opportunity to take the most from your PhD with the support of other PhD fellows. LAP is one message/mail away.

Tom Metz is a PhD-student in the NeuroD research group of Willeke van Roon-Mom. He is working on finding out which brain cell types are involved in a rare hereditary brain disease called Dutch type cerebral amyloid angiopathy (D-CAA) using single cell RNA sequencing. He is also testing a potential therapy for D-CAA, using an exon skipping approach with antisense oligonucleotides (AONs) in a transgene mouse model. In the LAP board he is a member of the events committee.

(2018-2020)

(2018-2020)

(2018-2020)

(2018-2020)

My name is Margherita Botto and I'm a third year PhD student. My research is in the field of structural biology and, more specifically, my project is about proteins involved in DNA replication. I'm currently focusing on a distinct protein, the replicative DNA polymerase called Pol I. It is involved in the Okazaki fragments maturation by removing RNA primers on the DNA lagging strand and replace them with newly synthesized DNA strands. It has to perform multiple tasks at the same time, and malfunction of this polymerase would lead to possible DNA breaks, causing different forms of chromosomes abnormalities.

With my research I'm trying to understand better all the different tasks that Pol I has to perform and how those are ordered over time by the use of biochemical and single molecule experiments.
As member of the international board, my main role in LAP consist in organizing and promoting the multiple events, both scientific and networking oriented, that we organize throughout the year.

(2018-2020)

I’m Max, head of LAP event committee. The topic of my PhD is: MRI in aortic pathology.

(2018-2020)

My name is Nanda and I am a PhD candidate at the ophthalmology department. My PhD project focuses on AAV-mediated gene therapy for inherited retinal diseases caused by mutations in the CRB1 gene.

In the LAP board I am a member of the events committee. As a member of the event committee I learned how to organize educative as well as social events and had the opportunity to meet many other PhD candidates in the LUMC.

Hi! My name is Nienke and I am a PhD candidate at the Rheumatology department, currently in my 3rd year. My project focuses on the effect of treatment on B cells in rheumatoid arthritis and their possible role as biomarker in disease activity.
I am part of the LAP board as secretary. In this role, I enjoy the combination of representing PhD candidates within the LUMC to strive for improvements for PhDs, but I’m also involved in the organization of interesting and fun events. Being part of LAP has been a great opportunity to meet and work together with fellow PhD candidates from the LUMC!
We always love to hear new ideas from any PhD candidate in the LUMC or input about possible problems and possible solutions. Please don’t hesitate to contact LAP!