José Borghans

José Borghans runs an interdisciplinary research group, with a main focus on the quantification of leukocyte dynamics. She was originally trained as a theoretical immunologist at Utrecht University, and obtained her PhD in 2000 on studies of lymphocyte and MHC diversity. After her PhD, she started to work in experimental immunology laboratories, aiming to bridge the gap between wet lab experiments and mathematical modelling. Funded by a Marie-Curie Fellowship, she worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the Institut Pasteur in Paris studying lymphocyte homeostasis. During another postdoctoral period, funded by an NWO Veni grant, she worked at Sanquin Research in Amsterdam to study lymphocyte dynamics in HIV infection. She has been working at UMCU since 2004, funded by several NWO grants, and was appointed Associate Professor in 2009 and Full Professor of Quantitative Immunology in 2021. She has formed an interdisciplinary research group with Kiki Tesselaar, which facilitates the close integration of experimental and mathematical immunology. Using state of the art immunological techniques, including in vivo stable isotope labeling in mice and men, the group studies the dynamics of different types of leukocytes in homeostasis, during healthy aging and in different diseases, including leukemia, HIV infection, and post-stem cell transplantation. In addition, she is heading the Computational Immunology Core of the CTI, which brings together all researchers using computational techniques to study the immune system.