Our Board Members
Ioana IIie
PresidentThe president leads this organization with passion and vigor. For such a young organization, the focus of the term is on 1) establishing active communication channels between our members, our active volunteers and academy policy makers, and 2) reaching national awareness of the presence of this organisation.
As of February, she has been a TTAP in Chemistry of Biomolecular Systems at the University of Amsterdam. she focuses on the complex interplay between structure and function of biological and bio-inspired systems, using computational modelling based on the underlying biochemistry and physics. She has a Physics background and an MBA, did her PhD in Computational Biophysics at the University of Twente and postdocs at the Universities of Darmstadt and Zurich. For two years she was IT lead of the Life Science Zurich Young Scientist Network in Switzerland (LSZYSN). LSZYSN promotes excellence in life sciences in Switzerland, and its main mission is to reduce the existing gap between academic research and the life science industry. For three years she was a board member of the PhD Network of the University of Twente (P-NUT) for which I was also elected as President. The role of P-NUT is to inform, connect and represent (University and national level) PhD candidates from the University of Twente. Her time as a President was characterized by the professionalization and growth of a young organization. Additionally, it was marked by changes in the Dutch education system, which required a lot of negotiations with the University officials in order to defend the rights of PhD candidates.
Athina Vidaki
Vice PresidentThe VP connects Assistant Professors across the Netherlands and defend their interests by organizing regular events addressing political and organizational national changes as well as communicating with policy makers. The VP will promote the interests of Assistant Professors nation-wide and raise awareness among our senior colleagues of our struggles and interests.
She is an Assistant Professor at Erasmus MC, performing innovative and technology-driven research in (epi)genomics. Together with another colleague, she has been trying to set up a first-of-its-kind local network at my institution. She has always been valuing the benefit of professional societies for achieving profession-wide progress, policy making and offering individual support. After her arrival in 2016 she joined the Erasmus MC postdoc network, which she served for >4 years, 2 of which as a Chair. As a person and researcher, her main talent is thinking out-of-the-box and my main drive to create impact.
Stephan Hacker
SecretaryAs secretary, my most visible task for you will be summarizing the achievements of each year in the yearly statement, presented in the general assembly in April. Behind the scenes I furthermore will keep a record of the activities of the board and the organisation in general such that from day one of our organization we will have archive enabling to pass on everything we built together.
Stephan Hacker is Assistant Professor at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry of Leiden University. He studied Life Science at the University of Konstanz, Germany. Afterwards, he performed his PhD studies with Prof. Andreas Marx at the University of Konstanz, Germany, and his postdoctoral research with Prof. Benjamin Cravatt at Scripps Research in La Jolla, USA. After his postdoctoral research, he started his independent career as group leader supported by a Liebig Fellowship at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. His group is focused on the identification of new target proteins for the antibiotics of the future. For this purpose, his group develops chemistries for novel covalent protein ligands targeting diverse amino acids as well as chemoproteomic technologies to study their target engagement with resolution of the modified amino acid residue in proteome-wide studies.
Anouk Beniest
TreasurerThe treasurer should 1) establish a financial system for APNet that is simple, transparent and fair and 2) successfully obtain yearly funding from government institutions to organize activities and services for our members and 3) focus on the committee “Network growth & Sustainability” to attract new members and stimulate local networks of Assistant professors as well as linking with partner organizations.
Anouk Beniest is an Assistant Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in Earth Sciences since March 2021. She finished my studies in Geology at Utrecht University, after which I moved to Paris (Sorbonne University) to pursue a PhD degree. Her first postdoctoral position (1,5 years) was at VU Amsterdam, after which she got my second postdoc position at GEOMAR in Kiel, Germany on a Alexander Von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship. She has been an active committee member advocating for Early Career Scientists (ECS) at various levels in academia. Her most important and influential position was within Europe’s largest Earth Sciences organization (EGU), where she attended board meetings and voiced the needs of ECS, representing about 9,000 ECS members. Together with two colleagues she launched a more local, but quite effective initiative, bringing the Assistant Professors of the department together to discuss the needs and become active in the department. Her international experience has helped to develop her own vision about what academia would and could look like. Together with Eveline Snelders, they started this initiative, APNet, to represent and include Assistant Professors into academic conversations at national level.
Anne de Bruijn
PR LeadThe lead of PR is to enrich the communications among all the group committees in PR related activities, and further provide sufficient supports, such as maintaining safe and healthy news platforms via social media, as well as interactions among news agents.
Anne de Bruijn is assistant professor at the department of Educational Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She studied educational sciences at the Radboud University, Nijmegen, after which she pursued her PhD at the University of Groningen. Her research focuses on physical activity and children’s cognitive and social-emotional development, specifically in (primary) school settings. Being a sports-enthusiastic herself, she aims to find out how all children can benefit from engaging in physical activity.
Martin Skrodzki
IT LeadThe lead of IT provides sufficient support to the IT operations, such as maintaining safe and healthy backends to all ICT aspects of AP-Net.
Martin is an assistant professor at the Computer Graphics and Visualization group at TU Delft in the Netherlands. He’s an associate editor of the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts and an editor of the online journal w/k – Between Science & Art. Furthermore, he’s a member of the Solid Modeling Association, and a member of the Delft Young Academy. His research interests include the the use of illustrations in mathematics, visualization of high-dimensional data, discrete geometry processing as well as interactions between mathematics and arts.
Luisa Cortesi
Board MemberAdditional Board members support the activities of AP-Net in general. They take on special tasks that are
Luisa Cortesi is an environmental anthropologist who studies water disasters and climate change, environmental knowledge and environmental justice, drinking water contamination and purification technologies, floods and sustainable development. She is currently Assistant Professor of Water, Disasters, and Environmental Justice at the International Institute of Social Studies, The Netherlands, as well as Sustainability Fellow and Board Member at the Young Academy for Sustainability, Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies, Germany. In 2020 she was awarded the Marie S. Curie Junior Fellowship at the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies. Previously at Cornell University, she has been Visiting Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability, Department of Natural Resources and Environment; Stanford H. Taylor Postdoctoral Fellow in Science and Technology Studies and Anthropology; and Fellow at the Atkinson Centre of Sustainability. Dr. Cortesi holds a dual Ph.D. with distinction in Anthropology and in Environmental Sciences from Yale University.
Board Member Alumni
Kaitai Liang
Board Member AlumnusIT&PR Lead 2022 to 2023
Eveline Snelders
Board Member AlumnaTreasurer 2022 to 2023
Rifka Vlijm
Board Member AlumnaSecretary 2022 to 2023