Jana Van Vliet-Ostaptchouk

Jana van Vliet-Ostaptchouk studied Biology at the Novosibirsk State University, Russia (MSc in Molecular Physiology, 1995). In 2010, she successfully defended her PhD on the thesis ‘Revealing the genetic roots of obesity and type 2 diabetes’ at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Then, as an NWO-Rubicon fellow she worked in the group of Dr. Ruth Loos at the MRC Epidemiology Unit, the University of Cambridge, UK, to investigate the pleiotropic effects of the obesity susceptibility genes on metabolic traits. In the same period she became involved in the research on the gene-environment interactions and the role of epigenetic factors in metabolic diseases at the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), the Netherlands. She extensively participated in multiple national and international collaborations including genome-wide-association studies consortia (GIANT, MAGIC, DIAGRAM) and the FP7 BioShare-EU Healthy Obesity project. In 2014, she received t he Fellowship from the Dutch Diabetes Research Foundation to investigate the effects of common Endocrine Disruptors on the risk to develop type 2 diabetes.

Since 2015, Jana van Vliet is Principal Investigator at the Department of Endocrinology (with a second affiliation at the Department of Epidemiology), UMCG, Groningen, the Netherlands. Her present research aims to elucidate the etiology of various health conditions due to environmental exposures by zooming in on underlying metabolic, genetic and epigenetic processes . Another focus of her research is the identification of epigenetic profiles associated with metabolic alterations and the mechanisms linking the responses to environmental factors and disease development.