Dr K.A. van der Heijden

Kiki first studied Cultural Sciences (specialized in Media Culture) at Maastricht University (2003-2006). She moved to London (United Kingdom) to continue with a Master Media and Communications Management at King’s College (2006-2007), where she investigated dominant racial discourses in advertising in her master thesis. After obtaining her Master (with distinction), she joined ACI Supplies in Maastricht in the role of European Marketing Coordinator, developing European marketing strategies, working on vendor fundraising and analyzing growth markets (2007-2012).  

Missing the challenge and thrill of science, Kiki went back to university to pursue a Research Master in Cognitive Neuroscience at Maastricht University (2010-2012, cum laude). During her subsequent Ph.D., she investigated the neural mechanisms of human sound localization with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) under the supervision of Prof. Beatrice de Gelder and Prof. Elia Formisano. Kiki received an Erasmus Mundus Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience Mobility Fellowship to conduct part of her Ph.D. research at Georgetown University with Prof. Josef Rauschecker (2015-2016).

Since 2017, Kiki is working as a postdoctoral researcher at Maastricht University. She works on interdisciplinary research projects at the interface of neuroscience, computational modelling, and clinical audiology. Kiki has close collaborations with the Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) Department (part of the School for Mental Health and Neuroscience [MHeNs], Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences), the Maastricht Center for Systems Biology (MaCSBio, Faculty of Science and Engineering) and the Department of Knowledge Engineering (DKE, Faculty of Science and Engineering).