About me

I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Clinical, Neuro and Developmental Psychology of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, where I teach several courses within the field of neuropsychology.

I have always been fascinated by the mechanisms that underlie the development and treatment of addiction and related psychiatric disorders. During my PhD research, I became increasingly aware of the “male” bias in addiction research, focusing almost exclusively on men while women compromise approximately 30% of all patients. Over time I became increasingly passionate about identifying sex and gender differences in the neuropathology and treatment of addiction, and other psychiatric disorders, such as ADHD. In my research, I use various methods including neuroimaging (e.g., structural and functional MRI) physiological assessment (e.g., skin conductance and heart-rate variability) as well as neuropsychological assessment.

In 2016 I finished my Ph.D. research on emotional processes in cocaine addiction, which resulted in a dissertation titled: Are cocaine users too sensitive? Since then I have been involved in a number of different research projects, ranging from studies on the neural correlates of emotion dysregulation in ADHD and the development of working-memory related interventions to treat alcohol and nicotine use disorder to studies focused on identifying sex (and gender) differences in the (neuro)pathology and treatment of substance use disorders and ADHD.