I was born and raised in Utrecht, and after I finished high school I moved to Amsterdam to study Biomedical Sciences at the VU University Amsterdam.
Afterwards, I started the research master program Cardiovascular Research at VU University Medical Center. During this master I had the opportunity to perform an internship both at Sanquin Research Amsterdam (the research department of the Dutch blood bank) and at Charité Universitätsklinikum Berlin, Germany.
After my graduation, I moved to Eindhoven to start a PhD project in the research group of Carlijn Bouten and Anthal Smits, at the Soft Tissue Engineering and Mechanobiology group, at the Department of Biomedical Engineering.