Team

Hilleke Hulshoff-Pol

Professor of neuroscience - University Medical Center Utrecht 

Hilleke Hulshoff-Pol’s research focuses on structural and functional brain plasticity throughout life in health and in psychiatric disorders, particularly in relation to genetic and environmental influences. She studies individuals and their twin siblings, using magnetic resonance imaging at (ultra) high field. Brain plasticity is measured as changes over time in brain volume, cortical thickness and structural and functional network connectivity using longitudinal approaches in children, adolescents and adults. 

Lydia Krabbendam

Professor and Department Head Clinical, Neuro and Developmental Psychology - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Lydia Krabbendams research focuses on the development of social cognition and motivation in adolescence and young adulthood, using functional neuroimaging and experimental tasks in combination with ecological momentary assessment and social network analysis. She is further interested in the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying the emergence of psychopathology during this developmental phase.

More information can be found on her website

Lucres Nauta-Jansen

Principal investigator, head section Youth at Risk - Amsterdam UMC-VUmc

Lucres’ research focuses on the development of antisocial and delinquent behavior in children and adolescents. Main aim is to unravel the neurobiological mechanisms that, in interaction with other individual and environmental factors, may explain the development, persistence and effectiveness of treatment of antisocial and delinquent behavior in children and adolescents. Projects involve studies on antisocial and delinquent adolescents in juvenile justice institutions, closed youth care and other groups of children and adolescents that are (at risk of) getting into contact with the police.

René Veenstra 

Professor of Sociology - University of Groningen

Prof. Veenstra’s research focuses on the theoretical and empirical elaboration of a social network approach to bullying and victimization and pro- and antisocial behavior. He is Director of the Interuniversity Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS), the Netherlands. 

More information can be found on his website

Nienke van Atteveldt

Professor of Neuroscience and Society: Mind, Brain and Education - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Nienke’s research focuses on how children become motivated and resilient learners. Her lab investigates the developmental interplay between adolescents’ self-beliefs, functional brain development, and their learning trajectories and wellbeing in school. In addition, they use portable EEG in schools to provide adolescents an experience of control over their learning processes, and study the societal impact of neurotechnologies.

For more information, see:  www.laboflearning.com

Thijs Bol

Associate Professor - University of Amsterdam

Thijs’ research focuses on inequality in education, the labor market, and science. His work mostly focuses on understanding how inequalities between groups arise, and how we can understand why trajectories diverge within these three domains. In current research projects he tries to understand inequality of opportunity in education and studies how the linkage between school and work affects labor market outcomes.

For more information, see his website

Barbara Braams

Assistant Professor - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Barbara’s research focuses on adolescent neurocognitive development and decision-making. She is especially interested in (real life) risk-taking behavior and social influence on risk-taking behavior. In her research she uses a variety of techniques including fMRI, computational modeling, hormone assessments and laboratory tasks.

More information can be found on her website

Anna van Duijvenvoorde

Associate Professor - Leiden University

Anna van Duijvenoorde’s research examines how adolescent’s decision making and learning is shaped by social context. She uses behavioral assessments, fundamental models, and functional neuroimaging to answer questions such as, why do peers increase adolescent risk-taking, and how can adolescents be motivated for school. She regularly works together with academics from other disciplines to understand how findings on adolescent behavior and brain development relate to youth law, youth safety and social resilience.

More information can be found on her website

Barbara Franke

Professor of Molecular Psychiatry - Radboud University Medical Center, Head of Division Genome Research, PI at Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour - Radboud University

As a molecular biologist and geneticist, Barbara’s research is focused on understanding the genetic contribution to psychiatric disorders and related behavioural traits, in particular in the externalizing spectrum. In her research, she integrates gene-identification approaches with bioinformatics, neuroimaging, and different model systems to map the biological pathways leading from gene to adaptive and maladaptive behaviour.

More information can be found on her website

Ingmar Franken

Full Professor and head of the Clinical Psychology group - Erasmus University Rotterdam

Ingmar Franken  has been using behavioral and neuroimaging methods to study neurocognitive aspects of addiction and substance abuse. More recently, he is also focusing on longitudinal studies and population neuroscience, and investigating the role of neurocognitive mechanisms in adolescents in order to discern causes and consequences of substance use. Another focus is the cognitive profile of high risk populations such as children of addicted parents.

Valeria Gazzola

Head of Department - Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, and Associate Professor - University of Amsterdam

With her research, Valeria aims at unravelling the neural bases of empathy and at understanding how empathy-related neuronal responses inform and influence social decision-making and other-regarding behaviour.  The current project will focus on identifying the neural basis of individual differences in how people resolve situations in which goals for the self are in conflict with goals for others.

Hilde Huizenga

Professor and department head of Developmental Psychology Institute of Psychology - University of Amsterdam

Hilde Huizenga uses advanced mathematical and statistical models to obtain more insight into human development, as assessed by behavioral and neuroimaging methods.  Current projects focus on decision making, reinforcement learning, risk taking and motivation in typically developing adolescents and in adolescents diagnosed with ADHD and/or mild to borderline intellectual disability.

Loes Keijsers

Professor, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Loes’ research examines the impact of parenting and social media on adolescent well-being and adjustment. Employing novel longitudinal research designs and analytical methods, she studies how the real-time influences of social interactions in daily lives can trigger the development of internalizing and externalizing problems. In interdisciplinary collaborations, she translates these insights into eHealth tools and products for adolescents, their families, and practitioners.

Christian Keysers

Department Head - Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience & Professor, University of Amsterdam

Department Head - Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience & Professor, University of Amsterdam

More information can be found on his website

Mark de Rooij

Professor and Department head of Methodology and Statistics, Institute of Psychology - Leiden University

Marks research focuses on the development of statistical tools for the analysis of complex data sets. These might either be data sets with many response variables for which Mark uses visualization tools to better understand the relationships between predictor and response variables. These might also be data coming from various modalities or domains for which he develops computational intensive predictive modelling tools.

More information can be found on his website

Arne Popma

Full professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry & Head of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry - Amsterdam UMC - VUmc

Popma’s research focuses on the developmental pathways and underlying mechanisms of antisocial behavior in young people. 

Gert Stulp

Assistant Professor - University of Groningen

Gert’s research focuses on biological and social influences on (reproductive) decision-making through survey research and simulation modelling. His research also focuses on improving survey methodology, and he recently developed an open-access tool that allows collecting large personal works within surveys.

More information can be found on his website