profile: j. ramakers, phd

Julian Ramakers has started at 15th of April as a post-doc within the Nutrigenomics Consortium. She is situated at the department of Human Biology in Maastricht and will collaborate in WP-E on human studies, focusing on the intestine. Her project will be based on the outcomes of the mice studies performed in WP-A.

Julian was born on December 1, 1978, in Sittard. She completed secondary school at Serviam in Sittard in 1997. In the same year she started her academic education at the Maastricht University, where she studied Biological Health Sciences and graduated in 2001. During her internship in 2001 at the department of General Surgery of the Maastricht University she studied the role of fibroleukin and Toll-Like-Receptor (TLR)-9 in experimental colitis. From January 2002 until December 2006 she was appointed as a PhD student at the department of Human Biology of the Maastricht University. During this period she conducted both in vitro studies using intestinal cell lines as well as in vivo studies in animals to examine the effects of different (food) components (among others fish oils and b-glucan) on processes related to intestinal inflammation and to unravel the (molecular) mechanisms underlying these effects. She also studied the effects of conjugated linoleic acids (CLA) on inflammation markers in healthy subjects with an increased risk on cardiovascular diseases.