Current Job Title/Affiliation: Full professor Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts and Science Professor
How has ISPG membership helped you or benefitted your career? Fantastic opportunities to meet with colleagues, discuss shared interests, form new collaborations.
Why do you study psychiatric conditions? My field is that of twin studies and behavior genetics. When studying behavioral development in children, we include those who develop without any major problems and those who face challenges. This is also what we observe in adults. When working with a large twin-family cohort, there is an enormous diversity among participants and a large proportion of research tends to fall within the field of psychiatric genetics. This advancement was fueled by other developments: the enormous progress in the field, technology breakthroughs, infrastructural collaboration, progress in data analysis methods and the e.g. PCG and ISPG. The second important reason comes from participants: they approach us with questions about mental health issues based on their experiences and family histories and ask us for answers and help.
What is your favorite part of your job? Research
What is your current research focus or project? Major foci include multi-omics approaches to understand variation in complex outcomes; major depression study in 11 genotyped cohorts in the Netherlands; the genetics and epigenetics of twinning; causality modeling with applications to victimization, intergenerational transmission and extension of infrastructural facilities to enable for example GWA projects with data available at statistics Netherlands.
What is one piece of advice you would give to a Ph.D. student? Develop a good skill set.
What is your favorite WCPG memory? Meeting a colleague whom I had not seen for 20 years and immediately starting to talk about research opportunities.
