My UM
My UM
Search

Dr Linda Rieswijk, Ph.D. (L.)

As a Senior Academic Teacher at the Department of Advanced Computing Sciences (DACS), I divide my time between teaching (80%) and research (20%), contributing to both the bachelor’s and master’s programmes offered by our department. My teaching portfolio includes delivering lectures, supervising students, and developing educational materials.

I am deeply passionate about science communication and public engagement. I serve as the city coordinator for Pint of Science Netherlands and as the outreach coordinator for our department, helping to translate complex scientific concepts into engaging experiences for a broader audience. I am actively involved in various outreach initiatives, including the PAS Festival, KidzCollege, Weekend of Science (Weekend van de Wetenschap), and the “Pub-up your Poison” event, which was part of the International Congress of Toxicology.

In addition, I support professional development for teaching staff as a co-coordinator of the University Teaching Qualification (UTQ) programme for PhD candidates and postdocs within the Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE). 

Beyond my teaching and outreach duties, I have served on the FSE Faculty Council and have been a member of the University Council since September 2025, contributing to decision-making at the university level. Within the University Council, I chair the Research & Education Committee.

My research experience lies in the fields of molecular epidemiology, environmental health sciences, and toxicogenomics.

Previously, I worked as a postdoc at the Institute of Data Science and at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, focusing on leveraging big data for the risk assessment of carcinogens. By integrating toxicology, molecular epidemiology, exposomics, bioinformatics, and data science, I aim to gain greater insight into the causes of complex diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and neurodegenerative disorders. 

Earlier in my career, I developed the eNanoMapper ontology during a postdoctoral position at the Department of Bioinformatics at Maastricht University. I obtained my PhD in Toxicogenomics (Maastricht University, 2016) and both my MSc and BSc degrees in Nutrition & Health from Wageningen University.

I thrive at the intersection of science, education, and outreach—and am always open to collaborations that foster responsible innovation and public engagement.

Expertises

Expertise:

  • Toxicogenomics
  • MicroRNAs and epigenetics
  • Systems Biology
  • Chemical carcinogenesis
  • Bioinformatics
  • Data analysis
  • Pathway and Network analysis
  • Data integration
  • Ontology development and validation
  • Data Science
  • Teaching (e.g. lecturing, mentoring tutorial groups, practical supervision, report grading)
  • Writing scientific papers
Career history

In 2004,  Linda started her bachelor study “Nutrition and Health” at the Wageningen University, specialized in Molecular Nutrition. After her graduation in 2007, she continued her studies with a master in the same field and obtained her degree in September 2009. During her masters she worked on a thesis for 6 months on Antioxidative characteristics of selenium in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs)” within the framework of the Selenium and Prostate cancer (SePros) study. After she finished her master thesis, Linda went to the UK for 4.5 months to do her internship at the Human Nutrition Research Centre of the Newcastle University. The internship covered the study of “The tissue specific effect of maternal folate depletion on the epigenetic gene regulation in mice offspring”. On the 1st of January 2010 Linda started working as a PhD in the area of toxicogenomics at the Department of Toxicogenomics (Maastricht University) within a major EU financed research program of the Netherlands Toxicogenomic Centre entitled: “An applied system biology approach to predict chemical safety”. The aim of this PhD project was to elucidate the role of microRNAs and epigenetics in chemical carcinogenesis by applying an integrative toxicogenomics-based approach. She obtained her PhD degree in January 2016. On the 1st of February 2015 Linda started working as a post-doctoral fellow on the eNanoMapper project (http://www.enanomapper.net), followed by another short post-doctoral fellowship in February and March 2017 at the Maastricht Institute for Data Science to support the efforts by prof. Michel Dumontier and his team on annotating drug indications for DailyMed. In April 2017, Linda left the Netherlands for a post-doctoral fellowship in the US at the School of Public Health of the University of California Berkeley. Within the lab of prof. Martyn Smith she has been working on several projects related with exposomics. In January 2019, she returned to the Institute of Data Science to work again with Prof. Michel Dumontier on the Digital Society project of the VSNU and the BReIN (Brightlands e-Infrastructure for Neurohealth) project. From September 2021, Linda is working as a lecturer at the Department of Advanced Computing Sciences and is the PhD/postdoc coordinator of the UTQ/CPD trajectory at FSE Central.