Research Team Lead

Assistant Professor

I am an Assistant Professor at Erasmus University Medical Center and a psychiatric epidemiologist. I lead the psychiatric genetic research within the Generation R Study, but my work is inherently collaborative and regularly leverages large-scale, multi-cohort designs to achieve robust, highly powered insights into intergenerational health. Through my involvement as work package leader in the Horizon Europe project FAMILY, I investigate the intergenerational transmission of mental health risk via epigenetics, while my Erasmus MC Sophia foundation funded project on perinatal depression disentangles complex genetic and environmental routes of transmission from maternal depression to offspring psychopathology. Methodologically, I specialize in bridging genetic and perinatal epidemiology with advanced longitudinal, high-dimensional mediation and factor analytic modelling. I routinely work across multiple omics layers, including genetics, DNA methylation, and microRNA, to map the intricate biological mechanisms underlying psychiatric vulnerability.