dr. Evie van der Spoel

Postdoctoral researcher

Evie van der Spoel (1992) started studying Biomedical Sciences at Leiden University in 2010. At the end of 2015, she received a BW-plus grant from the Board of Directors of the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) to carry out doctoral research for three years. After obtaining her master’s degree, Evie started in January 2016 as a PhD candidate at the Geriatric Medicine section within the Internal Medicine department of the LUMC under the supervision of prof. dr. Gerard Jan Blauw, prof. dr. Hanno Pijl (Endocrinology section) and dr. ir. Diana van Heemst. Her PhD research has mainly focused on the associations between pituitary hormones and familial longevity in participants of the Switchbox study, which is part of the Leiden Longevity Study. The main findings were that offspring of long-lived families had a lower 24-hour growth hormone secretion (GH) (and a higher thyroid-stimulating hormone secretion (TSH)) compared to the control group.stimulerend hormoonsecretie (TSH)) hadden vergeleken met de controlegroep. In addition, Evie has conducted research into the relationships between hormones of different hypothalamic-pituitary-‘end-organ’ axes in healthy elderly people. On October 30, 2019 she successfully defended her dissertation. Since the beginning of 2020, Evie has been working as a postdoctoral researcher at both the Geriatric Medicine section and the Molecular Epidemiology section (Department of Biomedical Data Sciences). Her research in Molecular Epidemiology is part of the VOILA project (Vitality Oriented Innovations for the Lifecourse of the Aging Society). VOILA is coordinated by Prof. P. Eline Slagboom and is the largest collaboration of experts in the field of aging in the Netherlands. In particular, Evie will contribute to the development of a sustainable research platform for the elderly and to research into the role of gut flora in healthy aging.