I received my PhD with Cum Laude from the Netherlands Cancer Institute, defining a novel mode of action of a broadly used anti-cancer drug, doxorubicin, and its anthracycline members. I discovered that doxorubicin and other anthracycline members can also destabilize nucleosomes and evict histones from particular chromatin regions upon intercalating into the chromatin. As a result, the DNA damage response is attenuated and the epigenome of the cell is deregulated. After a brief period of post-doc training at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, I moved to the Department of Genetics, Stanford University in the US, where I developed unique genome-wide screen systems to study the function of the non-coding genome. In 2018 I started my research group at the Department of Cell and Chemical Biology. I was awarded the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Prize from NKI-AvL, the Academic Excellence Award from China, the Gisela Thier Fellowship from LUMC, the Bas Mulder Award/Young lnvestigator Grant from Dutch Cancer Society (KWF), and the ERC Starting Grant from European Research Council.
CURRENT POSITIONS
2023 – Associate Professor, Department of Cell and Chemical Biology, LUMC
2019 – Guest Professor, Norman Bethune Center, Jilin University, China
PREVIOUS POSITIONS
2018 – 2023 Assistant Professor, Department of Cell and Chemical Biology, LUMC
2014 – 2018 Post-doc fellow, Stanford University, USA
2013 – 2014 Post-doc fellow, The Netherlands Cancer Institute, the Netherlands
EDUCATION
2006 – 2013 Ph.D. (CUM LAUDE), The Netherlands Cancer Institute, the Netherlands
2004 – 2006 M.Sc. (CUM LAUDE), University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
2000 – 2004 B.Sc., Jilin University, China
AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS
2020 ERC Starting Grant, European Research Council
2018 Bas Mulder Award/ Young Investigator Grant, Dutch Cancer Society
2018 Gisela Thier Fellowship, Leiden University Medical Center
2013 Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Prize, the Netherlands Cancer Institute
2011 Academic Excellence Award, China Scholarship Council
orcid.org/0000-0003-0779-0730
