🍓I am an Assistant Professor at the Health, Medical and Neuropsychology unit of Leiden University, the Netherlands. I do experimental research on the impact of cognitions (expectations, beliefs, attitudes) on somatic health. With a focus on placebo and nocebo effects, I investigate their role in food metabolism, hunger regulation, and pain perception. Additionally, my research extends to examining how communication with healthcare professionals influences patients’ health. Finally, I engage in policy research, specifically collaborating with the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) on pandemic preparedness of the Netherlands. Moreover, I possess a strong interest in health equity and actively contribute as a part-time grant writer for Health & Help, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing essential medical care to underserved communities in Central America. I am passionate about using my skills and knowledge to advance science and make a positive impact in the world.
Skills
Experimental designs
Project oversight
Grant writing
Statistics and Programming
fMRI data analysis
Qualitative analysis
Academic path
Assistant Professor
I teach several courses to bachelor and master Psychology students (e.g., Health and Medical psychology, Clinical Neuropsychology, Innovations in Neuropsychology). As well, as I do research on placebo and nocebo effects in food metabolims and communication in serious illness.
Postdoctoral Researcher
I work as a scientific university partner of TNO (Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research) in the consortium “Preparedness for pandemics”. Additionally, I am involved in several research projects on placebo and nocebo effects.
Postdoctoral Researcher
As a part of the Rubicon fellowship from NWO, I investigated the neuroendocrine mechanisms of nocebo hyperalgesia in human and animal models.
Postdoctoral Researcher
I taught working groups for the course “Health psychology”; lead a randomized controlled trial on the conditioning of insulin responses in diabetes type-2; and worked on the knowledge exploration for Diabetes Fonds.
PhD candidate
Wrote a PhD thesis on classical conditioning of oxytocin responses; supervised multiple master and bachelor students.
Research Master in Behavioural Sciences
Other roles
Grant Writer
Health & Help is a small charity organization which provides essential medical care to underserved communities in Central America. I am leading the grant writing team, searching for the applicable grats and preparing the grant applications.
Project Manager
Replications & Reversals project aims to build a crowd-driven database that describes the replications of widely known effects across social sciences.
Scientific Advisor
Touch Medical Intelligence is a start-up creating a digital AI health assistant. I consult the company on the the scientifically proven behavioral health interventions.
Projects
Diseases of metabolism, such as diabetes type-2 and obesity, are extremely prevalent and require combination of pharmacological treatments and lifestyle interventions. In my research I investigate what psychological factors influence the effectiveness of these treatments and how we can use this knowledge to boost treatment effectiveness.
Health & Help is a non-commercial organization that delivers basic medical care in the areas with limited resources in Latin America. At the moment, it runs two clinics in extremely remote rural areas of Guatemala and Nicaragua where no other medical help is available.
FORRT (Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training) is dedicated to advancing research transparency, reproducibility, rigor, and ethics through pedagogical reform and meta-scientific research. As the project manager of Replications & Reversals, a project run by FORRT, I am committed to promoting open scholarship by collating replications and reversal effects in social science.
My research seeks to uncover the physiological and neural mechanisms underlying placebo and nocebo effects. By examining the changes that occur in our bodies when we experience symptom relief or exacerbation due to expectancy, I hope to shed light on this fascinating area of study.
Breaking bad news is a crucial aspect of healthcare communication, demanding empathy and sensitivity. To equip healthcare providers with the necessary skills, we’re developing a communication training program funded by Erasmus Plus.
Publications
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(2023).
Implicit gender bias in the diagnosis and treatment of type 2 diabetes: A randomized online study.
(2023).
Pharmacological conditioning of insulin effects in patients with diabetes type-2 and healthy controls: randomized controlled trial. .
https://osf.io/3ru6q/.
(2022).
Increasing the Effectiveness of a Physical Activity Smartphone Intervention With Positive Suggestions: Randomized Controlled Trial.
Journal of Medical Internet Research.
(2022).
Can contagious itch be affected by positive and negative suggestions?.
Experimental Dermatology.
(2022).
Olfactory exposure to late-pregnant and lactating mice causes stress-induced analgesia in male mice.
Science Advances.