Biosketch

Linda Clijsters is currently a researcher in the Laboratory of Alfred Vertegaal at the Leiden University Medical Center.

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Linda is originally from Weert, the Netherlands. She obtained her bachelor degree from the Utrecht University. She started  her  research  career  as  a  Master’s  candidate  in  the  laboratory of Prof. Dr. Jeroen Bakkers (Hubrecht Institute, Utrecht). Here, she learned basic  biochemical  techniques,  the  fundamentals  of cloning and zebrafish genetics, and mastered confocal microscopy to characterise the development of the zebrafish heart. To further broaden her expertise with genetic techniques, she joined the laboratory of Prof. Dr. Reuven Agami (Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam), to study how microRNAs regulate tumor suppressor genes, focusing on circadian clock genes. 

She did her PhD research with Dr. Rob Wolthuis and Prof. Dr. Rene Bernards (Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam) into the regulation of the mitotic cell cycle. To this end, she studied mitotic mechanisms that are essential for the next S­‐phase. During her PhD, she developed a great interest in the regulation of the cell cycle, specifically through regulated protein degradation by the ubiquitin-proteasome-system. To study this, and at the same time have an international research experience, she joined the laboratory of Prof. Dr. Michele Pagano (New York University, USA) as a postdoctoral fellow. There, she became a true cell biologist with strong biochemistry and proteomics expertise, as well as an independent scientist. She will continue her research into cell cycle regulation by SUMOylation and the ubiquitin-proteasome-system, and expand her work to studying molecular and cell biological mechanisms on the tissue and organism level of life.