Meet our RM CCN Alumni

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Andreas Bär 

Andreas Bär was born and raised in a small town in the middle of Germany.  In 2013 he moved to Groningen in the north of the Netherlands and followed the BSc in Psychology including a semester abroad in 2015 in Dundee, Scotland. In 2017 he joined the Research Master in Psychopathology at Maastricht University.    After a research internship on positive schemas in depression for his Master Thesis at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, he graduated from the Research Master in 2019. Thereafter, he started with his PhD on mental imagery as a motivational amplifier in depression at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Since March 2023 he is back at Maastricht University working as an Assistant Professor in Clinical Psychological Science, while finishing his dissertation. 

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Katherine Bassil  

Katherine Bassil was born in the United States and raised in Lebanon. She obtained her Research Masters in Fundamental Neuroscience at the University of Maastricht in 2018 after gaining her BSc in Biology and a minor in Psychology at the Lebanese American University. During her internship at the Gage Lab at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, she investigated the molecular effects of stress in human pluripotent stem cell-derived neurons. Currently, she is finalizing her PhD at Maastricht University where she investigates candidate genes involved in post-traumatic stress susceptibility. She also partly works for a Brightlands start-up NeuroMind, as a project manager and designer. NeuroMind is the #1 clinical decision support tool worldwide for neurosurgery. Katherine works on mending the bridge between stakeholders and finding solutions to their needs. During her free time, Katherine runs a neuroethics educative platform “Neuroethics Today” where she raises awareness on the ethical and societal implications of neuroscience and neurotechnology to the general public.

 

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Alexandra Emmendorfer

Alexandra Emmendorfer was born in Connecticut in the USA, but moved to Germany at a young age, where she completed her high school education. She returned to the USA for her bachelor studies at Northeastern University in Boston, where she studied Behavioral Neuroscience with a minor in Linguistics. After her graduation in 2015, she moved to Maastricht for the Research Master in Cognitive Neuroscience (cohort 2015-2017). She completed her master thesis at UM, which was a collaboration between the M-BIC Brain and Language Group in the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, and the BAND-Lab from the Department of Neuropsychology and Psychopharmacology. She was able to further develop the research line she started during her master thesis into her PhD project, which she defended in February of 2022. Since November 2021, she has been working as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Donders Institute in Nijmegen

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Romain Hollands

Romain Hollands was born and raised in the south of Limburg. He obtained his Research Master in Drug Development and Neurohealth at the University of Maastricht in 2018 after gaining his BSc in Psychology and Neuroscience also in Maastricht. During his internship at Hoffman – La Roche in Basel he investigated a novel target for human epilepsy treatment in mouse and rat models. Afterwards, he started working as a teacher and project leader at the University of Maastricht. Instead of working as he researcher himself, Romain chose to work for and with researchers. Currently he is a scientific consultant and international account manager at Noldus IT.

Noldus IT is the world leader in scientific hard- and software solution for behavioral (neuro)scientific research in animals and humans. Founded 31 years ago in Wageningen, The Netherlands, it currently serves researchers in over 100 countries worldwide. In his position, Romain visits clients all over the world advising and helping them with their current and future research.

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Marilien Marzolla

Marilien Marzolla grew up in a small town in the south of the Netherlands. She completed her BSc in Psychology at Maastricht University in 2017, where after she completed the Research Master in Neuropsychology. She did her research internship at Oxford University, working on neurofeedback for stroke rehabilitation at the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging. Her internship led her to a full-time research assistant position in the same research group, where she worked until 2020. She applied for PhD positions back in the Netherlands and got a job as junior researcher in the Neuropsychology & Psychopharmacology Department at Maastricht University. With a new grant, she was able to turn this into a 4-year PhD position and is now working on sensory hypersensitivity after brain injury within the Limburg Brain Injury Center. Being in the third year of her PhD, she is now mainly working on publishing existing data as well as preparing a new study. Next to her research activities, Marilien is teaching at FPN and working with patients at the memory clinic in the hospital.  

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