Journal of Computational Systems Biology

I studied biology at the University of Groningen (RUG; the Netherlands), obtained my PhD also at the RUG on molecular biology of Gram-positive bacteria. In 2002 I started working as a Post-Doc at the laboratory of Prof. Kuipers (Molecular Genetics; RUG) in the early days of microarrays and bioinformatics. The amazing speed at which the high-throughput experimental biology and bioinformatics develop and the unprecedented view on microbial metabolism and regulation soon drew my attention and firmly hold me in their grip ever since. After Post-Docs at the RUG and the University of Greifswald (Germany) I started my job at NIZO food research as senior scientist bioinformatics and as academic group leader of my bioinformatics group in Nijmegen.

My group (bacterial genomics, Rumc) focuses on researching the association of microbial consortia and human health through (meta)genomics approaches. The research performed in Nijmegen is inspired both by biological research questions from academia as well from industry. For the latter, my second work-place at NIZO food research is instrumental. The group has a strong track record on predicting bacterial functional properties, microbial sequencing, population profiling, and multi-variate data analysis.

My scientific goal is to develop and use bioinformatics and systems approaches to translate knowledge of well-established microbial model organisms to microbes of emerging importance, both from a fundamental and an applied perspective. Integration of information from heterogeneous sources obtained for different model organisms is key to deduce hypotheses concerning how microbes interact with each-other and their matrix.