Kim van der Sloot

Kim van der Sloot is a medical student at the University of Groningen. After graduating from her bachelor degree with honors in Medicine in July 2015, she is currently working on her master’s degree. In her third year of medical school, Kim has started doing research in the field of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), focusing on the effect of environmental factors on disease etiology and progression. We have developed an extensive questionnaire describing all environmental factors that are thought to play a role, either through a protective or a risk increasing effect on IBD development.

During a 5-month internship at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Boston under supervision of dr. Khalili, Kim has studied the role of visceral adiposity on risk of complications in patients with Crohn’s disease and its interaction with genetic susceptibility. This has led to a poster presentation at the Digestive Disease Week in May 2016, an oral presentation at ISCOMS Groningen in June 2016 and a paper currently under submission by a peer-reviewed journal.

Back in Groningen, she has continued working on collecting data with an environmental questionnaire to study their separate and coherent effect on disease etiology and progression. She intends to apply for the University of Groningen MD/PhD program in the near future, to continue her research while finishing medical school.