My Scientific Interests

Microorganisms are often underestimated, yet they constitute a vital role in ecological and societal systems. I am fascinated by the strong link between processes on the cellular level and ecosystem functioning. Especially, since we need to understand these systems better to determine how stressors, like climate change, could have an effect. In my research, I therefore focus on two main questions:

• How do changes at the cellular level have an impact on entire ecosystems?
• What is the influence of climate change or other stressors on these processes?

Current Project

My PhD is part of the SURPHYVE project in close collaboration with the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) and the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) under supervision of Dr. Susanne Wilken, Prof. Dr. Corina Brussaard, and Dr. Jolanda Verspagen. I am going to assess the role of phagotrophy in Arctic phytoplankton winter survival under current and warming conditions by performing a fieldwork expedition to Svalbard, laboratory experiments, and the analysis of omics data. The goal of this project is to get a better understanding of Arctic phytoplankton winter survival strategies and the role mixotrophy plays in the Arctic.

I have obtained my Bachelor in Biology at the University of Amsterdam, where I had the opportunity to get in touch with several courses related to aquatic biology; Challenges in Freshwater and Marine Ecology, Marine and Freshwater Biology, and Field Experiments in Marine Biology. Further, for my Bachelor Thesis I worked together with Dr. Jolanda Verspagen and Dr. Harm van der Geest to determine the relation between the pelagic primary productivity of Lake Markermeer and resuspension events by performing controlled lab experiments.

Next, I continued at the University of Amsterdam with the Master Freshwater and Marine Biology. Since this was a Research Master, I had to perform two Research Projects and a Literature Review.

• For my first project, I focused on the community composition and pigment content of Benthic Cyanobacterial Mats on the coral reefs of Curaçao under supervision of Dr. Petra Visser, Dr. Merijn Schuurmans, and Prof. Dr. Mark Vermeij. These mats were sampled while diving and the community composition as well as hydrophobic and hydrophilic pigments were determined in the lab by respectively 16S rRNA analyses, HPLC, and spectrophotometry.
• For my second project, I looked into the seagrass microbiome of Ruppia maritima in Faro, Portugal, working together with Julia van Duijnhoven MSc, Dr. Aschwin Engelen, and Prof. Dr. Gerard Muijzer. The microbiome of R. maritima was determined by analysing the 16S rRNA with Nanopore Sequencing on a MinION followed by a bioinformatic analysis in NanoClass. Besides, a controlled lab experiment was performed in which the microbiome of R. maritima was manipulated with different micro-organisms thought to have growth promoting characteristics.
• My Literature Review was about quantitatively determining the effectiveness of oxidant algaecides in Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) control management. Together with Dr. Dail Laughinghouse and Dr. Petra Visser, we tried to see how well these oxidant algaecides are studied and whether we see a trend in effectiveness by comparing the EC50 values of experiments across literature.