Institute: Erasmus MC University Medical Center Rotterdam
Biography
I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Public Health at Erasmus MC Rotterdam where I work on elimination of helminth infections in men as part of a personal fellowship awarded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO/ZonMw Innovational Research Incentives Scheme Veni), with a focus on evolution of drug resistance, mobility, and diagnostic challenges with regards to verifying elimination. In addition, I am a principle investigator on two projects: 1) transmission and control of soil-transmitted helminths for the Gates-funded NTD Modelling Consortium, and 2) predicting the burden of onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis and patient profiles for 2025 for the United States Agency for International Development through the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative. I supervise several PhD students and postdocs working on approximate Bayesian computation methods and modelling of transmission and control of visceral leishmaniasis, human African trypanosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, soil-transmitted helminths, and schistosomiasis.
My involvement in human infection challenge studies started with extracurricular research activities that I undertook during my time as a PhD student. In this period, I started a collaborating with Robert Sauerwein’s group at Radboudumc Nijmegen on a Bayesian model for the intra-host parasite kinetics in controlled human malaria infection (CHMI). Since then, I have continued to support the Radboudumc group with deeper analyses of the samples resulting from their CHMI trials. As of 2018, I am also collaborating with Meta Roestenberg at the Leiden University Medical Center on modelling of intra-host parasite dynamics of controlled human hookworm and schistosome infections.
Key Publications
A list of publications can be found here.
Web Links of Interest