News
Lygature welcomes new colleagues
We are delighted to welcome many new colleagues to Lygature! In the past months, Lianne, Koen, Lucy, Wim, Martin, Olenka, Daniel, Beatrice, Nebo, and Evert-Ben joined our organization. Below, they introduce themselves and explain what expertise they bring to our team.
Lianne Hulshof joined Lygature as a Program Manager in January. Her background is in Biology and Neuroscience. Her PhD was about discovering the cellular and molecular processes involved in Alzheimer’s disease. During her PhD at UMC Utrecht she was involved in the continues improvement of the translational neuroscience research division and contributed to the organisation of several scientific events. These activities sparked her interest, and strengthened her skills, in the organisation and management of projects. In Lygature, Lianne works as a program manager within PharmaNL and the Pediatric Praziquantel Consortium. Her main hobbies are water polo, though she loves all sorts of sports, and boardgames.
Beatrice van der Velden holds a bachelor's in business administration and is currently doing a master's in medical business and Innovation, combined with a bachelor's in law. This interesting combination of disciplines fits well with Lygature's projects. Before joining Lygature, she worked at the MLC Foundation, which has now been integrated into Lygature and converted into a new portfolio, namely the Health Law, Privacy and Ethics portfolio. Within this portfolio, she supports several projects, including IDEA-FAST, RSNN and PRUDENT. Her interests are very much in medical innovations and the laws and regulations surrounding them. Therefore, her master's thesis will focus on Artificial Intelligence within healthcare.
Beatrice is also enjoying student life, which is full of social activities and participation in associations. In addition, she is a real family person, loving to babysit the younger children in the family
Martin Boeckhout has extensive experience as a researcher and adviser on ethics, law, regulation, and policy of health research. His academic background is in Philosophy of science, and Science and technology studies. He obtained his PhD from Utrecht University on the ethics of biomedical research in a dissertation on the ethics and governance of large-scale biomedical research infrastructure. Over the last few years, Martin has focused mostly on data privacy and ethics review. At Lygature, Martin works as an ethical and legal adviser as part of the newly set up portfolio on Health law, Privacy and Ethics. He is involved in several initiatives, among which the Trials@Home consortium. He will also continue to serve as regular adviser to COREON, and the ELSI Servicedesk. Moreover, Martin is seconded part-time to the Ministry of Health to work on a national framework for ethics review of health research not currently covered by the Dutch legislation on medical research.
Evert-Ben van Veen is a health law and ethics advisor at Lygature. He has a long pedigree in health care and health law, as a policy advisor, as a head legal counsel of a university hospital and as director/senior consultant as MLCF. MLCF operated on the interface of health care and responsibly opening data for a learning health care system. The more recent publications of Evert-Ben can be found on the website of MLCF. As of 2023, all running MLCF projects have been transferred to Lygature. Evert-Ben will support Lygature’s Health Law, Privacy and Ethics portfolio and is involved in the HEAP and DELIVER projects.
When not at work, Evert-Ben likes to sail in a challenging dinghy or work in his garden. He is also authoring a book about public interest, health care and health data. When at his own pace, he does not consider that work either. At least, not yet.
Wim Koot started work at Lygature in January 2023 as a Financial Administrator. For the past 30 years, Wim worked in the financial departments at several companies in the Netherlands, such as Pearle, DHL, TBS Ltd, Douwe Egberts and Airco HP. He likes working with numbers and looks forward to contributing his expertise to Lygature. In his spare time, Wim enjoys playing and watching football, and cycling on his mountain and racing bikes.
Koen Voskuil holds a master's degree in Drug Innovation from Utrecht University. During his studies, he focused on pharmacology and longevity research. Koen worked at Janssen B.V. for three years in clinical operations and data management, specifically for the COVID vaccine program and other infectious diseases. There, he gained experience in clinical trial conduct, regulatory side of clinical data collection and working with various clinical data vendors. Koen joined Lygature as a Program Manager and will be working on the RSNN-RMT and PharmaNL programs.
In his free time, Koen plays Ultimate Frisbee and goes on cycling trips. He is also a board member of the Windmill Tournament, the biggest annual tournament in Europe hosted in Amsterdam.
Nebojša Savić was born in Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (now Serbia). He acquired his BA degree in Ethnology and Anthropology at the University of Belgrade, and MSc degree in Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. Nebo conducted research on the intersection of consumer and sexual identities in post-socialist societies, post-socialist consumer culture, and structural inequalities. He moved to The Netherlands in 2016. Since then, he has lived in Rotterdam with his partner Henk. Nebo joined MLCF in March of 2020 as a Project Assistant and Office Manager, where he supported the team in a variety of tasks: coordination support for activities in EU-funded projects, coordination and communication support on the Code of Conduct for Health Research project, administrative support, and office support. Following the ongoing integration of MLCF into Lygature, Nebo became a part of Lygature’s Operations Team as a Program Management Officer. In Lygature, Nebo supports the coordination of the UNITE4TB project.
Daniel Groos holds a bachelor's degree in Law and a master's degree in Encyclopedia and Philosophy of Law. After his studies, he worked at the MLC Foundation, where he gained experience in privacy and health law in the interest of furthering a learning healthcare system. Daniel joined Lygature as a Legal Officer and is currently working on projects such as IDEA-FAST, HEAP and DELIVER, where he focuses on the ethical and legal aspects regarding the (further) use of patient and participant data. His personal interests include philosophy, history, literature, and film, and he enjoys spending his free time on strength training, cooking and photography.
Olenka van Ardenne studied corporate and business law at the University of Leiden, followed by an intern traineeship and financial training within an international operating banking institution and a vocational training at a large international operating law firm. Olenka gained work experience as an investment lawyer at an international law firm in the field of merger, acquisitions, financial legal opinions, and financial structures for hospitals. Furthermore, she worked in several positions as an attorney at law, advisor, project manager, senior legal counsel, general counsel, member of supervisory board for health law-related tasks and occupied positions for a broad range of healthcare institutions, associations, the national blood institution, and corona test team.
As a lead of the Lygature portfolio Health law, Privacy and Ethics, Olenka works together with her team members, on project like Prudent, IDEA Fast, Coreon, and IDERHA. Moreover, she is involved in structural and at hoc advises for healthcare associations in the field of Privacy and/or Health law.
Olenka likes water sports, mountain bike tracks and hikes. She enjoys visiting cultural sites, listening, and playing music (piano), and having good dinners with family and friends.
Lucy Schapendonk studied painting restauration and decoration at Sint-Lucas in Boxtel. After graduating, she decided to follow a graphic study in Packaging design in Rotterdam. She did an internship at Debuut as a Graphic designer and continued working there after her internship. In the last years of her study, Lucy worked as a freelance graphic designer. In Lygature, Lucy provides creative solutions to graphical challenges. She contributes innovative ideas to current designs and loves to learn about Lygature’s projects.
Lucy is a big animal lover. She is passionate about art and creativity and is interested in taxidermy and helping to give animals a second life.
