Kirsten started her Medicine studies in Groningen in 2014 and completed her Bachelor of Science in Medicine in 2017. During her bachelor degree she became involved and fascinated by research in the cardiovascular field. Starting with a pilot project as part of the Junior Scientific Masterclass program in her second year. This project triggered her to pursue in research and start her research internship as part of the Master in Medicine. Together with her supervisors she decided to write an application for the MD/PhD program, for which she got accepted in November 2018. After finishing her first year of clinical internships in the UMCG in July 2019, she has started two full years of research for her PhD. At a later stage during her MD/PhD trajectory, she will spend another six months for research at the University of San Diego under the supervision of Prof. dr. Heller Brown.
Ongoing project description:
Kirsten’s MD/PhD project is focused on the physiological cardiac adaptation to exercise. Studying exercise in healthy and diseased models will improve our understanding of physiological growth in the heart. Kirsten believes that increased understanding of cardiac physiological growth will help us to develop novel therapeutic targets for heart failure. The project is supervised by prof. dr. de Boer and dr. Westenbrink.
Current projects:
MITO-FORCE, KETONE-HF
