Susanne Kooistra is an Associate Professor of Molecular Neurobiology in the University Medical Center Groningen. Her work focusses on glial cells, how they develop normally and what changes in glia during aging in health and disease. Her main interest is microglia, the tissue resident macrophages in the central nervous system that play essential roles in the healthy CNS and may drive disease development and progression. Using state-of the-art models and technologies, including epigenomic and novel transcriptomic methods, she aims to expand the knowledge on microglia states, what drives their occurrence, how they are associated to pathology and what their function is. She has received several personal grants, including a Rubicon and VENI (from NWO, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research), and an MS-fellowship (from Stichting MS Research) for her work on epigenetic regulation of cell fate, including the phenotypic switching of microglia in general, as well as in the context of multiple sclerosis.
