DWSF Laureates 2021-2022
The LNVH board and bureau are pleased to announce the 2021-22 Distinghuished Women Scientists Fund laureates! Currently 6 applications are rewarded per call. This year the following 6 laureates will receive the DWSF travel grant:
Jeewanthi Gangani Sirisena
Jeewanthi Gangani Sirisena is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Twente, Faculty of Engineering Technology, Department of Water Engineering and management. With the travel grant she will attend a workshop at The UNESCO-Madanjeet Singh Centre for South Asia Water Management (UMCSAWM) at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. Jeewa has a sound knowledge of future variations in climate and human activities and subsequent hydrological responses at basin and regional scales. With this workshop - and future reserach collaborations with the University of Moratuwa - she will advance her expertise in effectively conveying the scientific findings to stakeholders (e.g., farmers, government officials, NGOs, and water resources planners and managers) regarding risk, vulnerability, and recovery costs involved with maladaptation. After completing this training program, she will be able to be involved in disaster risk and management (DRR) studies conducted by the Faculty of Engineering Technology, University of Twente and contribute to the other project team members from different organizations concerning DRR.
Kelly de Ligt
Kelly de Ligt is a postdoctoral researcher at the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. With the travel grant she will visit the University Hospital in Innsbruck, Austria where they have successfully implemented patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) in clinical practice. PROMs are validated questionnaires that measure health-related quality of life (HRQoL), functioning, and symptoms in patients. In Innsbruck, they apply this data to further personalize treatment and follow-up, as they have insight into which patients suffer from impaired functioning and symptoms, what their characteristics are, and what support they need. Within the field of PROMs, Kelly’s research is focused on very similar topics as the ones they work on in Innsbruck. The visit is the start of a shared initiative in which they will harmonise PROMs data from both facilities. Based on this experience, they write recommendations for bringing PROMs data together internationally for research purposes. This is important: many hospitals in Europe collect PROMs, but data remains very fragmented, and would be more valuable for patients if brought together. The recommendations will enable researchers to extend the initiative with data from other facilities in the future, creating an internationally harmonised big-data set for PROMs data. With the data from both institutes, Kelly, together with her colleagues at Innsbruck, will build a prediction model for breast cancer patients that predicts which patients are faced with lowered HRQoL, functioning, and symptoms after cancer treatment. In the future, they will refine this model every time we add PROMs-data to our database. (Click here for video portrait)
Natashe Lemos Dekker
Natashe Lemos Dekker is a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University, Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology within the ERC project “Globalizing Palliative Care”. With the travel grant she will spend a period as a visiting fellow at the UCLA Department of Anthropology, a highly esteemed institute and leading in the field of medical and psychological anthropology. She will participate in, and contribute to, their interest group ‘Mind, Medicine, and Culture’, which advocates a critical perspective on health and illness that would greatly benefit Natashe’s own research on end-of-life care. During the visiting fellowship she will write an article based on data she is currently gathering in her ethnographic fieldwork in Brazil, on how older people and their families navigate access to end-of-life care. Being able to participate in the Department’s seminar series, presenting her work, as well as learning from the work of others, will provide fundamental insights in developing the theoretical framework of this article and future publications. She will engage with key scholars in medical and psychological anthropology, including Faculty members Prof. Jason Throop, Prof. Linda Garro, and others. In this regard, the visit will also play a pivotal role in creating possibilities for future international collaborations. (Click here for video portrait)
Olya Kudina
Olya Kudina is an Assistant Professor at TU Delft, Policy and Management Department, Ethics/Philosophy of Technology Section. With the travel grant she will travel to the Yale Interdisciplinary Bioethics Center (New Haven, USA) for a research collaboration with the Center’s staff and colleagues from the Yale School of Medicine on facilitating mental wellbeing among young adults with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and ethics of technology. Recent research has revealed that AI-based conversational agents help young adults with managing anxiety. However, it is difficult to develop conversational agents that balance medical needs with human values (e.g., engagement and trustworthiness). This gap can be bridged by relying on the ethics method of Value Sensitive Design (VSD) to prevent value conflicts, understand potential value changes and help align multiple considerations. On her research trip to Yale, Olya would like (1) to conduct field research about the pioneering AI-based application (i.e. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy conversational agent) for treating anxiety and addiction in young adults, developed by Patricia Simon; (2) understand how it impacts the values and norm systems in the care practice; and (3) with the field findings in mind and together with Patricia Simon and her TU Delft colleagues, begin to develop a value-based and AI-infused conversational agent that monitors and anticipates the shifts in the mental wellbeing of young adults, adapts to the users’ needs and fosters a proactive attitude towards mental wellbeing.
Renée Verdiesen
Renée Verdiesen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI). With the travel grant she will visit professor Chadeau-Hyam and his group at Imperial College London. At the NKI, Renée conducts several projects focused on characterizing the mechanisms that play a role in the development of the different molecular breast cancer subtypes. This is important because understanding differences in both aetiology and prognosis across breast cancer subtypes will further improve breast cancer risk stratification and ultimately survival. The research group Renée is part of leads the B-CAST project, which aims to understand the determinants of risk and prognosis of molecular breast cancer subtypes (http://www.b-cast.eu). At Imperial College, professor Chadeau-Hyam and his group are experts in the application of multi-omics analyses. Moreover, they previously conducted several studies that included gene expression and epigenetic data from studies that are also included in B-CAST. Renée aims to perform a pilot study to explore the feasibility of integrating B-CAST data with these previously collected omics data. In addition, there is ample data available at Imperial College that she can use to develop her multi-omics data analysis skills. To work on this dataset will not improve only her analytical skills but will also open new avenues for her future research beyond the B-CAST resource. After her visit, she will transfer her newly acquired analytical skills to the research group at the NKI. (Click here for video portrait)
Due to personal circumstances, Mehrnoosh Shokouhi will take over Renee Verdiesen's travel grant. She will be using the travel grant to undertake a research trip with the same objective.
Titia Geertje Meijer
Titia Geertje Meijer is AIOS and postdoctoral researcher at Erasmus Medical Centre Rotterdam. She completed a PhD project in the fields of homologous recombination repair in breast cancer. With the travel grant she will visit the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting. At this meeting she will present the newest data on the ex vivo functional test she developed with her colleguaes to select breast cancer patients for targeted therapy (PARP inhibitors) based on a real-time read-out. Titia has decided to becaome a medical pathologist. She wants to bridge the gap between basis research and clinical practice. She would like to integrate both worlds more in her daily practice. She therefore pursues a career as a postdoctoral researcher alongside working as a resident pathologist. Attending the AACR annual meeting will help her to broaden her horizon and explore different research topics that she would like to partake in. (Click here for video portrait)