Amber Fijn

Biography

My undergrad was highly interdisciplinary, exposing me to a wide arrange of fields. I took a particular interest to biology, as I was generally interested in better understanding how life operated at a molecular level. Motivated by this, I continued my academic career with a MSc in Molecular Genetics and Biotechnology at Leiden University. Through a wet-lab internship, I gained more insights into the process of data generation. Simultaneously, I further developed my interests into computational processing of these data to come to improve our understanding of the respective systems. This motivated me to pursue a MSc in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, where I was exposed to the various methods and data types that dominate the field. During my internship, I developed a graph-based model that processes scRNA-seq data of developing cells to predict their position along a pseudotemporal axis. This experience further solidified my interest in tool development, with a particular interest to incorporate prior knowledge into the inference process. I am excited to continue my scientific development as a PhD student in the Saez-Rodriguez group.

Research Interests

I am interested in developing tools that leverage prior knowledge to analyse biological data and come to new (mechanistic) insights into the respective processes. My research aims to understand how host-microbiome interactions take shape during health and disease by analysing scRNA-seq and spatial transcriptomics data. Gaining insights into how these interactions are organised at a molecular scale, and how this is disturbed in diseases such as IBD or CRC, can help us work towards treatment.

Professional Career

Education

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