Niels is an Assistant Professor at the LUMC Department of Biomedical Data Sciences and the Health Campus The Hague. He has a background in sociology and statistics and obtained a PhD in Molecular Epidemiology in 2020. His research integrates large-scale family, social, and molecular data to better understand how our social context influences the (molecular) mechanisms underlying the intergenerational transmission of healthy aging and longevity. He focuses on how socioeconomic resources such as income, education, and social networks, together with lifestyle factors, are exchanged within families, interact with health, and influence chronic disease risk later in life. In addition, he works on combining social and omics data to predict disease risk across the life course. His work is multidisciplinary, drawing on aging research, demography, and socio-genomics. Niels’ research is supported by multiple grants, including a Riksbankens Jubileumsfond grant and an NWO Veni grant.
