In the past couple of months, five new experts have joined our team.
Postdocs
Ellen Engelhardt
Ellen Engelhardt has a MSc degree in Health Sciences Research from VU University Amsterdam, with a focus on cancer research. She completed her PhD at the Department of Medical Decision Making at Leiden University Medical Center in collaboration with the department of Medical Psychology of the Academic Medical Center. For her PhD research, she assessed the availability and accuracy of prediction tools developed to aid decision-making about adjuvant systemic therapy for early-stage breast cancer. She also explored the implications of the use of prediction tools during patient consultations on information provision and (shared) decision-making. Her current research focusses on the development of prediction tools to support clinician and patient decision-making in oncology.
Publications
Thomas Klausch
Thomas Klausch is a post-doctoral researcher in biostatistics specializing in the fields of predictive modeling (statistical learning) and causal inference. Before joining VUmc, Thomas was a post-doc at the Department of Methodology and Statistics at Utrecht University, where he also received his PhD degree. His PhD thesis focused on methods for estimating and adjusting errors in survey statistics. In this time, he was additionally a fellow at the methodology section of Statistics Netherlands (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek). In his current research, he focusses on methods for estimating optimal treatment strategies using patient registry data. He is involved in EU project BD2Decide where he collaborates in an international network on a clinical support system for treatment decision making. Furthermore, he acts as statistical consultant to researchers at VUmc.
Publications
Janneke Wilschut
Janneke Wilschut studied econometrics at VU University Amsterdam and obtained a PhD degree in health economics in 2012. She did her PhD research at the department of Public Health of Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam, where she used a micro-simulation model to estimate costs and effects of colorectal cancer screening. After her PhD she applied productivity analysis to answer policy questions related to the efficiency of the public sector. Her current research focuses on the modeling of disease in order to optimize the allocation of medical resources. She is also a statistical / methodological consultant and teaches in the area of statistics.
Publications
PhD students
Federica Inturrisi
Federica Inturrisi studied Biology at the University of Catania and received her MSc degree in Molecular Biosciences, major Cancer Biology, from the University of Heidelberg and DKFZ. She also holds a MSc degree in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. After having worked on STI-related projects and in particular in the field of infection and cancer, she started her PhD at the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam. The aim of the project is to evaluate benefits, harms and cost-effectiveness of the risk-stratification strategy as foreseen in the new Dutch HPV-based cervical cancer screening program implemented in 2017.
Gabrielle Jongeneel
Gabrielle Jongeneel studied health sciences at the VU University Amsterdam and received her MSc degree in health policy. During her master degree she developed a special interest in health economic modeling. She recently started her PhD at the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam on the project ‘personalized adjuvant treatment in stage II colon cancer’. The aim of the project is to evaluate the selection of stage II colon cancer patients for adjuvant treatment to improve the long-term health benefits and effectiveness of new molecular selection strategies by using a decision model.