About

I am a PhD-candidate in bioinformatics in the Delft Bioinformatics Lab at TU Delft and my project is in close collaboration with the Bacterial Genomics Group at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where I do most of my work. My background is in electrical engineering and computer science, and I have gained a huge interest in biology the past few years. Now I am using my knowledge on algorithms, data structures and machine learning to help answer biological questions.

My research focusses on developing new tools and algorithms to analyse bacterial populations. While many bacteria are harmless, some specific strains can become pathogenic, even though they’re considered the same species. The goal is to improve our ability to track and dissect the genomes of specific bacterial strains in (DNA) sequencing datasets. This will aid in our understanding how antibiotic resistance arises in bacteria, or how the genes responsible for antibiotic resistance spread within a patient or hospital.

Professional appointments

• Computational Associate I, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Nov. 2017 - present
  Develop algorithms and tools for strain-level metagenomics.
• PhD-candidate, TU Delft, Nov. 2017 - present
  See above.
• Bioinformatics intern, DSM, Jun. 2016 - Oct. 2016
  Responsible for doing an initial analysis and literature review on a protein production problem at large scale with the bacterium Bacillus subtilis by modelling its proteome allocation and analysing protein measurements under different growth conditions.
• Software engineer, Studio Bereikbaar, May 2013 - May 2016
  Built several tools and applications to aid in data analysis of traffic engineering problems. Using these tools and applications,my coworkers could collaborate on evaluating multiple road construction scenarios quickly, which helped winning several tenders for the Dutch government.

Other internships, side-jobs and projects

• Google summer of code student, Python software foundation, May 2015 - Aug. 2015
  Implemented a graph visualisation system using OpenGL for the scientific visualisation library Vispy.
• Embedded software developer, TU Delft, Feb. 2012 - Feb. 2013
  Built a huge (3x3x1m, 24x24x8 LEDs) RGB LED display with a group of other students at Delft University of Technology. I was responsible for the embedded software on the Raspberry Pi.
• Several other software engineering internships and jobs, 2009-2016

Teaching assistant

I have been teaching assistant for the following undergraduate courses at TU Delft:

• TI2736-C Data Mining (2016-2017)
• NB2161 Bioinformatics (2016-2017)
• LB2291 Bioinformatics (2016-2017)