After finishing my Bachelor degree in Soil Water Atmosphere and Master degree in Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management (both completed at Wageningen University, the Netherlands), I worked at Deltares for 2 years on topics concerning future climate change in large river catchments. Because I wanted to know more about climate change in a broader perspective, looking not only at the past 30 years or so, I decided to start a second Master in Biogeology at Utrecht University (the Netherlands). In this Master programme I focused mainly on biological and geochemical proxies for past climate and environmental change. 

 

My PhD research at the KU Leuven (Belgium) concerned reconstructing climate, environmental and sea level change across the Cretaceous Paleogene (K/Pg) boundary at shallow sea sites across the globe. I mainly used benthic foraminiferal assemblages and foraminiferal stable isotopes as proxies for my reconstructions. Where possible, I combined my data with organic geochemistry and palynology (mainly dinoflagellate data).

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My current research as a Post Doc at CU Boulder focus mainly on (Ant)Arctic environments and climate, on time scales of several tens to hundreds of thousands of years before present. I will mainly use foraminiferal data combined with (organic) geochemistry.

 

Full CV

 

In addition, I love to combine my scientific work as a researcher with science communication activities. For example, in August 2015, I participated on a scientific cruise to Spitsbergen (Svalbard). A secondary goal of this cruise was to communicate to the broader public on climate change and the influence of human activity on our environment, even on remote locations like Spitsbergen.