I have been at the university of Groningen since 2014 when I started with my bachelor’s degree in molecular life sciences, during which I wrote my thesis on the rational design of a xylose isomerase. During my master’s in biomolecular sciences I was drawn towards computational techniques and wrote my thesis on molecular dynamics and computational enzyme design. I was also on the 2018 IGEM team where we engineered a yeast strain to degrade cellulose and used it to produce fine chemicals for polymer synthesis. I graduated cum laude from my master’s in 2020.

For my PhD I wanted to try my hand at being more creative with protein design and stumbled upon the Maglia lab. Protein nanopores are rather unconventional proteins and thus don’t fit well into conventional computational protein design tools. This leaves me with a lot of creativity to use all my skills and knowledge to come up with unconventional solutions, which I enjoy very much.

We have a very fun group of people at the lab, and I enjoy hanging out with them in my free time. Besides this I like playing (board) games and playing guitar sometimes.