As an assistant professor of Clinical Psychology, my research aims to realize effective prevention of Posttraumatic Stress disorder (PTSD) and other trauma-related mental health problems through a precision approach with three interconnected research foci:

 1) psychobiological processes underlying susceptibility and development of adverse mental health outcome after exposure to traumatic stress;

 2) prognostic risk detection to determine early following traumatic events who is at highest risk for adverse mental health outcome after exposure to traumatic stress and therefore most in need of preventive interventions;

3) innovative preventive interventions targeting pathogenic psychobiological processes in those at risk to prevent long-term adverse mental health outcome after exposure to traumatic stress.

Given the high lifetime prevalence of trauma and trauma-related mental health outcomes, this poses a considerable public health problem. Effective secondary prevention following trauma exposure would greatly improve well-being and health for the many individuals who would otherwise develop long-term adverse mental health outcomes, while decreasing the related large societal, economic and health care burden. 

Ongoing research:

As a neuropsychologist with a PhD in Psychoneuroendoimmunology, my research is highly interdisciplinary. It integrates concepts from clinical and experimental psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, psychopharmacology, endocrinology, with advanced statistical modeling within a variety of study designs during the acute trauma period. 

Currently, I am the principal investigator of the multidisciplinary 2-ASAP consortium, funded by an 8-year grant from the ZonMW GGZ program (2020-2027). This consortium ‘Towards Accurate Screening And Prevention: improving early risk detection and indicated prevention for PTSD (2-ASAP)’ aims to develop a sex-specific prognostic screening instrument derived with state-of-the art methodological approaches to reliably determine which recently exposed trauma-exposed individuals are at high risk to develop long-term PTSD, and precisely target preventive interventions towards these individuals. The consortium project involves partners from a variety of universities and health care institutions and advocacy organizations, including Utrecht University (Clinical Psychology and AI-aided knowledge discovery lab), Amsterdam University Medical Centers, Slachtofferhulp (Victim’s Support) Nederland, Arq National Psychotrauma Center and Erasmus Medical Center. 

Previous research: 
My Phd-project (UMC Utrecht, Psychoneuroimmunology Lab/Dutch Ministry of Defence) was the first study worldwide to identify pre-existing neurobiological vulnerability factors, including the ‘stress receptor’ glucocorticoid receptor, for PTSD and other trauma-related disorders.

My main postdoc projects (Amsterdam UMC/AMC, Psychiatry) were a multicenter pharmacological RCT and two pharmacological neuroimaging studies on efficacy of the hormone oxytocin to prevent PTSD and normalize associated brain processes. In addition to study co-design and coordination, I initiated several substudies on prognostic factors and related neurobiological processes for PTSD development.

My first studies initiated as assistant professor (Amsterdam UMC/AMC, Psychiatry) focused on whether and how individual differences in psychobiological stress reactivity and recovery are associated with differential vulnerability for PTSD, anxiety and depression upon trauma across a range of study designs and populations. This ranged from experimental stress studies in healthy individuals to large prospective cohort studies across different developmental periods throughout the lifespan, including Amsterdam UMC-cohorts Dutch Famine Birth Cohort (Hongerwinter) study; Helius study; Amsterdam Born Children and their Development (ABCD) study; and various national and international cohorts of acutely trauma-exposed emergency department patients and humanitarian aid workers. This research was supported by a Veni grant from Zonmw (2016), and a Narsad Young Investigator Grant from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation (2016). 

Please click here for my full publication list.