My main focus of research is Acute Lung Disease and Injury in Children.

Within this theme I have special interest in acute, severe viral (respiratory syncytial virus, RSV) infections and the effects of (pediatric) intensive care unit treatments such as mechanical ventilation, hyperoxia and fluid therapy. Research studies include clinical studies, translational animal studies (mice, rats, lambs and calves) and laboratory in vitro studies using complex co-cultures with immune (eg, neutrophils) and airway epithelial cells. With this work, I have characterized pneumovirus animal models for severe RSV infections in the last years. Furthermore, I am unraveling the importance of neutrophil extracellular traps in the pathophysiology of airway mucus obstruction.

Within this theme I have successfully initiated and established collaboration with multiple (inter)national partners from the:

- National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID, NIH), Bethesda, MD, USA

- Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

- Bioveterinary Research University of Wageningen, Lelystad, The Netherlands

- Department of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital, Utrecht, The Netherlands

- Department of Pediatric Pulmonology, Children’s Hospital Richmond, VG, USA

- Department of Lung Development and Remodeling, Max Planck Institute, Bad Nauheim, Germany

Other established research lines include:

- Non-invasive ventilation face mask personalization by 3D scanning and printing techniques (in collaboration with Technical medicine from the TU Twente and Industrial Engineers from the TU Delft)

- Aerosols and SARS-CoV-2 transmission (in collaboration with Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute, Institute of Physics, University of Amsterdam)