Principal Investigator of CNCR’s Secretory Vesicle Trafficking research team awarded with €340.000 and a guaranteed tenured associate professor position.
With the MEERVOUD initiative, the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) aims to increase the percentage of women appointed to advanced academic positions in life sciences.
This year, Heidi de Wit, assistant professor in the CNCR Functional Genomics department, is among the recipients. Her granted research proposal considers the study of molecular mechanisms that drive neurotransmitter release by means of electron microscopy (EM). With the grant money, De Wit plans on hiring a post-doc to join her CNCR research team: Secretory Vesicle Trafficking.
Upon completion of the four-year MEERVOUD project, De Wit is guaranteed a tenured appointment. In this position, she will follow up Jan van Minnen as CNCR’s EM-expert.
The core business of De Wit’s Secretory Vesicle Trafficking team: Docking of neurotransmitter-containing vesicles in neuroendocrine cells as well as synapses, visualized by means of electron microscopy.