Roy Simons

Hi, I am Roy, I have a background in biotechnology as I studied Life Science & Technology at Delft University of Technology. During my masters I was drawn into both the synthetic biology and bioinformatics fields of the Life Sciences. I gained more experience in bioinformatics after completing my internship at Microba, an Australian-based gut microbiome company. Finally I finished my masters in 2020 by collaborating on the development of a high throughput method for single-molecule FRET experiments, combining single molecule fluorescence microscopy with next generation sequencing.

On April 2021 I started my PhD at the Vidaki lab here at the Erasmus Medical Center. The goal of this PhD, with the support of Erasmus MC, is to develop CpGtracer: a targeted DNA methylation analysis method for the analysis of low-quality and -quantity input DNA. One of the applications on which CpGtracer will first be tested is in collaboration with the Adams lab for the analysis of cell-free DNA obtained from liquid biopsies in order to detect biomarkers related to neurological diseases, resulting in less invasive and more accurate diagnostics.