Biography

Before coming to Cambridge I studied psychology and criminology in Leiden and Amsterdam. For my PhD I investigated mechanisms explaining the intergenerational transmission of violent and criminal behaviour. Why do children of criminal/aggressive parents have a higher risk of showing similar behaviour? I contrasted several explanations for this intergenerational continuity such as social learning, official bias against certain families, and the transmission of risk factors. I investigated this in England as well as in the Netherlands. By doing this I hope to contribute to knowledge about the development of aggression and criminal behaviour, which can help to design interventions against such behaviour. I am fascinated by human development of which these types of behaviour are just one part. During my post-doc at UC Berkeley I continued this line of research and also looked at the opposite: how does children's problem behavior impact on parenting practices? I then transitioned into industry as a ux researcher and after Uber and Facebook I now work at a startup called Cradle (cradle.bio), where we want to use machine learning to make it faster,easier and cheaper to design proteins.