Tinca Polderman

Short CV

Tinca Polderman has left the CTG lab in April 2020, and works now in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Amsterdam. E: tinca.polderman@amsterdamumc.nl

• Oct 2014 Assistant Professor at the Center of Neurogenomics and Cognitive Research, Dept. of Complex Trait Genetics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
• Mar 2010 Assistant Professor at the Center of Neurogenomics and Cognitive Research, Dept. of Functional Genomics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
• Mar 2008 – Mar 2010 Post doc at the Dept. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, EUR, Rotterdam, in collaboration with Dept. Biological Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
• Dec 2007 – Feb 2008 Lecturer, at the Dept. Developmental Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
• April 2007 – Nov 2007 Post doc at the Dept. Biological Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in collaboration with Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive, Université de Provence, Marseille, France
• Jan 2007 – Mar 2007 Lecturer at the Dept. Developmental Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
• Dec 2001 – Dec 2006 PhD student at the Dept. Biological Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in collaboration with the Dept. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, EUR, Rotterdam

Teaching

I am a dedicated and enthusiastic lecturer, and involved in the following programs and courses:

From 2012-2017 I organized the minor Brain & Mind, and since 2011 I coordinate in this minor the course Nature versus Nurture.

In 2014 I set up the Honors course Biosocial aspects of criminal behavior together with Jorim Tielbeek and prof. Theo Doreleijers.

In 2017, Sophie van der Sluis and I started the Honors course The genetics era.

Since 2017, I am chair of the Faculty of Science Examination Board.

Research

After working for 10 years in one of the largest twin registers in the world to study the heritability of ADHD and related disorders, I moved in 2010 to the Center for Neuroscience and Cognitive Research (CNCR). The CNCR works at the frontiers of statistical and biological genetics and allowed me to expand my horizon, and extend my knowledge on novel methodologies and biological pathways. My main interest is in the comorbidity between psychiatric traits, potential shared genetic overlap, and underlying biological pathways. I published several papers that focused on shared genetic mechanisms between specific disorder dimensions in neurodevelopmental disorders. Another line of research is genetic by environment interaction (GxE) for which I currently focus on environmental factors that interact with genetic burden for externalizing problems. In 2015 I published a huge meta-analysis on virtually all published twin studies of the past 50 years on human traits [Nature Genetics, 2015], which is nicknamed ‘the mother of all heritability studies’. I supervise four PhD students with whom I work on gene-set analyses for psychiatric traits, genetic overlap between ASD and comorbid traits, the genetic link between psychopathology and brain networks, and sensory sensitivity in autism.

Publications

Highlighted papers:

• Hammerschlag AR, de Leeuw C, Middeldorp CM, Polderman TJC (2019). Postsynaptic, neuron projection, and brain-expressed gene sets relate to the shared genetic risk across five psychiatric disorders. Psychological Medicine, e-pub JULY 25
• Jorim Tielbeek, Ada Johansson, Polderman TJC, Raitiainen R, Jansen PR, Taylor M, Burt A, Tiemeier H, Viding E, Plomin R, Martin NG, Beaver KM, Waldman I, Munafo M, Paunio T, Mous SE, Pappa I, De Leeuw C, Hammerschlag AR, Dick D, Faraone SV, Popma A, Medland SE, Posthuma D (2017). Meta-analyses of genome-wide association studies on antisocial behaviour reveal high polygenicity, sex specific effects and pleiotropy with educational attainment. JAMA Psychiatry, 74, 1242-1250
• Polderman TJC, Benyamin B, De Leeuw CA, Sullivan PF, van Bochoven A, Visscher PM & Posthuma D. Meta-analysis of the heritability of human traits based on fifty years of twin studies. Nature Genetics, May 2015, doi:10.1038/ng.3285

See all publications of Tinca Polderman in PubMed or Google Scholar