Hanneke Willemen

Hanneke Willemen was born on March 21th, 1982 in Den Bosch. She studied Biotechnology at Wageningen University and in 2006 she received her Master’s degree with specialization cellular/molecular research. In 2006 she started working as a research technician at the Laboratory of Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI). In 2008 she started her PhD-project in the PNI-lab to studyneurobiological mechanisms underlying the transition from acute to chronic inflammation-induced pain under supervision of Professor Heijnen, Professor Kavelaars and Dr. Eijkelkamp. In 2013 this work resulted in her PhD thesis: “Chronic inflammatory pain: New molecules & mechanisms”. After completing her PhD she continued her research as a postdoc in the Laboratory of Neuroimmunology and Developmental Origins of Disease (NIDOD) under supervision of Dr. Eijkelkamp. She investigated the genetic contribution to chronic pain and identified an unidentified protein which has a key role to promote the development of chronic pain. In search for the molecular function of this protein she recently worked in the lab of Professor Falnes, Oslo University (Norway) for 3 months. In 2018 she was rewarded with a VENI (NWO) to study whether targeting mitochondria is a novel way to treat chronic pain. Currently she is working on this project in the neuro-immunulogy group (Dr. Eijkelkamp) at Center for Translational Immunology.