Radboud University Receives NWO Veni Grants for Research on Privacy in Criminal Law, Mining, and Malaria

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded a Veni grant to fifteen young researchers at Radboud University and Radboud university medical hospital. With this grant of up to 320.000 euro they can further elaborate their own ideas during a period of three years.

Veni is aimed at excellent researchers who have recently obtained their PhDs. Together with Vidi and Vici, the grant is part of the NWO Talent Program and is awarded annually. This year, the Veni grant will be awarded to a total of 174 researchers, fifteen of whom are affiliated with Radboud University.

Do we use our eyes to think?
Eva Berlot

We constantly move our eyes, not only when visually exploring the world, but also when exploring our inner worlds, such as when thinking. Are eye movements in such non-visual moments meaningful?
Addressing this question requires a systematic examination of eye movements as people engage with non-visual material, such as listening to stories. This research will investigate whether eye movements are related to an audiobook’s storyline, if they contribute to story understanding, and what the underlying brain mechanisms are. This will provide novel insights into how our thoughts and eye movements interact in everyday life.

Nice to meat you: How do social relationships affect young adults’ food intake?
Nina van den Broek

Eating healthier and more plant-based in the formative years of young adulthood can help solve the climate crisis and obesity epidemic. As young adults often eat and drink together with others, social relationships have a large influence on their food intake. However, the question remains whether this social influence is the same for all young adults. To answer this question, daily food diaries are kept by young adults and their most important social relationships. By examining when which young adults eat what are affected by whom and why, insights are obtained that will help tailor interventions to individual young adults.

Unlocking the Complexities of DNA Testing: Indigenous Peoples and the Quest for Historical Justice
Julieta Chaparro-Buitrago

What happens when DNA testing meets the intricate tapestry of indigenous/peasant peoples’ kinship? This project delves into Peru’s Genetic Data Bank (GDB), exploring its implications for historical reparations. Designed to match genetic profiles of human remains with living relatives, the GDB operates on the assumption that family ties reflect biogenetic inheritance; however, indigenous/peasant people’s kinship challenges this notion. This project seeks to explore the following questions from an anthropological perspective: How do indigenous/peasant rights intersect with the control of genetic information? What roles does kinship play in the quest for reparative justice?

Stability of Anti-de Sitter solitons
Sharmila Gunasekaran

To understand physical theories, we often start by looking at the lowest energy state. The anti-de Sitter (AdS) soliton is believed to be the lowest mass spacetime under certain boundary conditions. Normally, a state with the lowest energy is expected to be stable. This project aims to develop mathematical methods to rigorously quantify the stability of the AdS soliton.

Grounding colonial continuities: from museums and rocks to outer-space.
Alana Osbourne

Mining on earth is essential for devising the technology to go into space. Simultaneously, outer space quarrying is pitched as a solution to earthly resource scarcity. Yet, both on earth and in space, the extraction of natural resources is rooted in Euro-American colonialism.

Focusing on earthly and alien rock displays in museums, this project shows how, far from being a closed historical chapter, colonial logics of resource mining extend into the future and beyond our orbit. Studing these colonial continuities through rock exhibitions, the project shapes debates around the ‘decolonization’ of museum collections, mining, and space travel.

Fairness and algorithmic criminal justice: towards a human-centric definition
Anna Pivaty

Algorithms and AI are used not only to facilitate our daily life, but also to help criminal justice institutions to enforce criminal law. Facial recognition software is used by the police to identify criminal suspects. Probation services use Al-based applications to predict the risk of re-offending. This assessment is used to advise judges on whether someone should be detained pre-trial. Leveraging AI for these purposes is not without risks for the individuals concerned and their rights. This project examines these risks, focusing especially on how AI decision-making support tools are used in practice by the Dutch probation services and courts.

Unravelling Health Inequalities. The Historical Roots of Inequality in Death and Disease during the Epidemiological Transition in West-European Port Cities, 1850-1950
Tim Riswick

Today’s health inequalities have deep historical roots that are not fully understood. My project adopts an innovative comparative approach to the study of determinants of health inequalities in the port cities Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Glasgow in the period 1850-1950. The analysis of unique individual-level data on diseases such as tuberculosis, measles, smallpox, and cholera will provide new knowledge on the causes of inequalities in health. It will enable the study of how and why health disparities emerged. By shedding light on the past, it will offer new insights into why some health inequalities persist today.

Novel Perspectives: A Computational Approach to Dutch Fiction and Gender Equality, 1870-present.
Roel Smeets

Is fiction a mirror of society? Or do stories produce new realities? This project examines how Dutch novels from the late 19th century to the present imagined and perhaps even fostered the emancipation of women in society. It combines two aspects that are often studied in isolation: (1) literary descriptions of gender across time and (2) the changing position of women in modern Dutch society. Using computer-driven text-analyses of large-scale corpora, this project aims to reveal the extent to which fiction precedes or follows shifts in society.

“Get out”: A large-scale multi-method study on everyday discrimination in (semi)public spaces
Lex Thijssen

While there has been much attention devoted to discrimination in the labor market, in housing, and in education, so far less is known about discrimination in (semi)public spaces (e.g., on the street, in public transport, leisure, shops) – cf., “everyday discrimination in (semi)public spaces.” Which marginalized groups are more likely to be affected by everyday discrimination? Where, when, and why? And what are the consequences of everyday discrimination for social inclusion? This project investigates individual and contextual explanations for and the consequences of everyday discrimination using an innovative intersectional research design combining traditional survey, qualitative, diary, and field experimental designs.

SensoR: Deciphering the regulatory code of inherited sensory disorders
S. E. de Bruijn, Radboudumc

For about half of the individuals with inherited hearing or vision loss, no genetic diagnosis can be established. It is hypothesized that this can be partially explained by variants in regulatory DNA-elements that control the activity of genes. Because of a lack of understanding, regulatory DNA-variants are currently being excluded from standard genetic analyses. This project aims to establish a multistep workflow to find and interpret these disease-causing regulatory variants. A combination of innovative bioinformatic and experimental tools will be employed with the goal of increasing knowledge about regulatory DNA-variants and to improve the diagnostic yield for inherited sensory disorders.

Spotting the Differences: AI-based change detection in medical images
Alessa Hering, Radboudumc

This research proposal addresses the growing need for efficient cancer diagnosis and follow-up assessment in the current context of rising cancer rates and a shortage of diagnostic personnel. It focuses on developing AI-driven methods that combine images from multiple timepoints to identify clinically relevant changes between them. This innovative tool will empower radiologists to interpret studies with greater efficiency and higher accuracy, leading to better diagnosis and improved treatment selection and monitoring, and earlier detection of ineffective therapies.

The female brain on stress: uncovering molecular and circuit mechanisms of stress susceptibility
Sabrina van Heukelum, Radboudumc

Twice as many women suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than men. Yet, preclinical research into the neurobiological mechanisms underlying trauma susceptibility is heavily male biased. Considering prior observations of sex-specific brain and behavioral responses to trauma, I aim to investigate the mechanisms of trauma susceptibility in female mice. I will chart the response to trauma by combining behavioral readouts, brain and gene transcription measures, and provide proof-of-principle data for treatment of PTSD-like symptomatology in females. This research has the potential to uncover how trauma susceptibility is encoded in the female brain, creating handles for optimal future treatments of women.

Unleashing the success of FAP-targeted radionuclide therapy in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma
Sanne van Lith, Radboudumc

Activated support cells residing in the tumor microenvironment play an important role in the poor survival of patients with pancreatic cancer. In this project the researchers will develop radioactively labeled drugs that bind specifically to these activated support cells, in order to kill these cells with radiation. The researchers will study the efficacy and the mechanism-of-action of these novel radioactive drugs in animal models for pancreatic cancer.

DREAM BIG: Direct imaging of REtinal AMyloid depositions as BIomarker for cerebral amyloid anGiopathy
Floris Schreuder, Radboudumc

Cerebral amyloid angiopathy can lead to brain bleeding and dementia. This disorder is characterized by depositions of the amyloid protein within the blood vessels of the brain. However, these depositions cannot be detected without a brain biopsy. This research project will determine whether a patient-friendly method can aid in the diagnosis of cerebral amyloid angiopathy, by imaging amyloid depositions within the retina.

Take your vitamins! Exploring vitamin B6 metabolism as potential target to block malaria transmission
L.E. de Vries, Radboudumc

Mosquitoes spread the parasite that causes the devastating disease malaria. Resistance against malaria medication and insecticides stops the goal of eliminating malaria. The researcher will investigate the role of vitamin B6 in both the mosquito and the parasite and will study new chemicals that could reduce mosquito fertility and the spread of parasites. This project could help in the design of new strategies to eliminate malaria by simultaneously decreasing the mosquito population and curing the mosquitoes of the malaria parasite.