DCVA Steer your Career 2023

We are happy to announce that the first group of talents has been selected for the DCVA first edition of the DCVA Steer your Career program. The kick-off of the DCVA Steer your Career program will take place on the 31st of March 2023.

Out of 19 applicants, 15 talents were selected by the selection committee. The 15 selected talents represent different expertises within the cardiovascular field and will participate together in a 6-day program, spread over a period of 6 months. Within this program they will learn how to present themselves with an elevator pitch and how to create an impeccable CV and motivation letter. They will learn to understand the pillars of successful grant writing and how to find funding opportunities. They are given the opportunity to connect to professionals inside and outside academia to broaden their network and to obtain individualized career advice. In short, these young scientists are presented with the tools to take control over their careers!

Camilla Soragni

Jaimy Simmering

Jordy Kocken

Julianne van Oortmerssen

Kirby Lattwein

Maria Clara Labonia

Marie Depuydt

Maud Tjerkstra

Max Senders

Rahi Alipour Symakani

Renee Maas

Rio Juni

Tamar Wissing

Titus Lemmens

Vanessa Bröker

Meet the participants

Camilla Soragni
Postdoc researcher in Maastricht University in the department of Cardiology, School for Cardiovascular Diseases, under the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences. From the same institution she obtained her PhD, while she developed the project in a Leiden-based company, Mimetas which commercializes organ-on-a-chip platforms. At the moment she is involved in the differentiation of hiPSCs into cardiomyocytes to develop 3D structures of the heart.

Jaimy Simmering
Technical physician and postdoctoral researcher at the Multi-Modality Medical Imaging (M3i) group at the University of Twente in close collaboration with the department of surgery of the Medisch Spectrum Twente hospital, both in Enschede, The Netherlands. She will defend her dissertation entitled "Endovascular Repair of the Aorta: Stentgraft Deformation Matters" on April 14th, 2023. Her expertise lies in the evaluation of dynamic 4D (ECG-gated) CT scans to quantify deformation during the cardiac cycle and during follow-up of stentgrafts throughout the aorta. This research increases our understanding of the mechanisms influencing the success and failure of all types of EVAR towards the goal of improving clinical outcomes for all EVAR patients.

Jordy Kocken
PhD candidate at Cardiovascular research Institute Maastricht (CARIM), Maastricht University. Basic and translational research in non-coding RNA and extracellular communication in right ventricle failure during pulmonary hypertension to find new mechanism and therapies.

Julianne van Oortmerssen
Medical doctor and PhD candidate at the Epidemiology department of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Her PhD is embedded in the national IMPRESS consortium. She is also part of the Cardiometabolic Epidemiology research line of the population-based Rotterdam Study. Julianne’s research is focused on risk factors for cardiovascular disease with an emphasis on sex differences.

Kirby Lattwein

Maria Clara Labonia
Trained as a MD in Argentina including clinical rotations in Italy and Spain, she then continued her career path as a biomedical researcher doing a Master in Biomedical Sciences at Albert-Ludwigs University of Freiburg, in Germany. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University Medical Centre of Utrecht (UMCU), working at the Experimental Cardiology Lab jointly with the CDL department on optimizing cardiac delivery of nanomedicine-based gene therapy. Her main research goals are to achieve cardiac regeneration after myocardial infarction and to also provide new treatments to patients with heart failure.

Marie Depuydt
Post-doctoral researcher at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR), Leiden University. As a basic and translational scientist, she aims to elucidate how the immune system, in particular T cells, affects atherosclerosis progression by means of single-cell multi-omic approaches.

Maud Tjerkstra
Resident and PhD-student at the department of Neurosurgery at the Amsterdam University Medical Centers, University of Amsterdam, aspiring to become a neurosurgeon, combining a clinical with a scientific career. Her PhD focuses on subarachnoid hemorrhage, with special attention to biomarkers and delayed cerebral ischemia. She is now in her final phase of her PhD and looking forward to the next step as independent researcher in the neurovascular research field.

Max Senders
Vascular surgeon in training and a translational researcher at the Leiden University Medical Center. He recently completed his PhD-trajectory at both the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, US and the Amsterdam UMC, entitled: ’’Precision imaging and nanoimmunotherapy for inflammatory atherosclerosis.’’ His aim is to develop innovative imaging methods to study the immune cell dynamics in atherosclerosis and to unravel the connections with the hematopoietic organ system. Ultimately, he wants to translate these imaging strategies to patients and aid in the early evaluation of novel (nano)immunotherapies.

Rahi Alipour Symakani
PhD candidate at the Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam and aspiring cardiothoracic surgeon. His experimental work focuses on hemodynamics and right heart failure in congenital heart disease.

Renee Maas

Postdoc researcher at the University Medical Center Utrecht. After he recently finished her Ph.D, she continued her research as a postdoc within the experimental cardiology group aiming at using hiPSC-CMs for disease modelling and high-throughput screenings of therapeutic strategies to improve cardiomyocyte function in genetic cardiomyopathies.

Rio Juni
Postdoctoral researcher at Physiology department, Amsterdam University Medical Centers, The Netherlands. His research focuses on cardiac microvascular dysfunction and endothelial-cardiomyocyte crosstalk, particularly on the pathogenesis of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). Previously trained as a medical doctor, he now fully focusses on research with the goal to discover new potential therapeutic targets for HFpEF. He uses in vitro 2D and 3D endothelial-cardiomyocyte co-culture systems, as well as an in vivo HFpEF model, and combine it with transcriptomic approaches to answer his research questions. Furthermore, he utilizes patient materials (tissue biopsies, blood products) in his studies to translate his research findings to the clinic.

Tamar Wissing
Dr. Wissing is an interdisciplinary cardiovascular scientist working as a Postdoc at the Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Eindhoven University of Technology, and the Thorax Centre, Department of Cardiology, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Her work focuses on unraveling the mechanisms behind atherosclerotic plaque rupture, by bridging the areas of tissue engineering & mechanics, mechanobiology, and immuno(patho)logy.

Titus Lemmens
Senior PhD candidate at the Cardiovascular Research Institute Maastricht (CARIM), Maastricht University. His research is focussed on platelets and the vascular extracellular matrix (ECM). His aim is to investigate platelet-ECM interactions and improve the translatability of in vitro models for cardiovascular diseases using novel ECM extracts.

Vanessa Bröker
Senior PhD candidate at the CARIM School for Cardiovascular Diseases at Maastricht University. Her area of expertise centers around the development and application of iPSC-derived vascular models with a particular emphasis on biomimetic strategies. Using these models, she currently investigates the role of anticoagulant proteins on vascular calcification and atherosclerosis.