Social Sciences

Liesbeth van Vliet

2022-07-12T17:00:01+02:00

Health psychologist (1985), connected to Leiden University, has been awarded the Heineken Young Scientists Award 2022 in the field of Social Sciences. The jury praised her important contribution to improving the quality of healthcare for seriously ill patients, thanks to better communication between doctor and patient. Van Vliet’s research into how communication can help and harm patients shows a valuable translation between research and society.

The Heineken Young Scientists Awards are awarded every two years to four highly promising young researchers working in the Netherlands. The winners are selected from four fields of science: Medical/Biomedical Sciences, Humanities, Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences. The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences is responsible for the nomination and selection process. The award includes a cash prize of EUR 10,000 and a work of art. Previous laureates in the field of Social Sciences include Anna van Duijvenvoorde (2020) and Marie-José van Tol (2018). The award was created in 2010 by Charlene L. De Carvalho-Heineken.

About the study
Van Vliet studies forms of communication that make patients feel better, e.g., experiencing less stress and better remembering information, or feel worse when confronted with a serious illness. She is at the cutting edge of health communication, palliative care, and placebo and nocebo effects. In the laboratory, for example, she uses video vignettes to study the effects of certain ways of communicating. She also uses observational research in the medical office to look at the specific elements of communication and how they relate to patient outcomes. For example, one of her analyses shows that terminally ill patients feel better under the care
of more empathic doctors, and that they also remember more of a conversation with this type of doctor. This makes Van Vliet a versatile researcher who not only seeks answers to fundamental questions, but also knows how to translate the results into practice.

Jury praises direct application of knowledge in daily life
The jury admires the way in which Van Vliet actively engages in outreach. She regularly appears in newspapers and magazines, presents her work for professionals and other interested parties, and organises scientific events for a wide audience. Her work is also included in clinical bad-news guidelines and is thus directly applied in the consulting room on a daily basis. With her work, Van Vliet makes an important contribution to improving the quality of care for seriously ill patients.

About Liesbeth van Vliet
Liesbeth van Vliet (Lusaka, Zambia, 1985) studied clinical and health psychology at Erasmus University Rotterdam and obtained her PhD in 2013 for her research on communication during the transition to palliative breast cancer care at Utrecht University/Nivel. After her PhD, she worked for several years at the Cicely Saunders Institute at King’s College London. Currently, Van Vliet is a lecturer at the Department of Health, Medical, and Neuropsychology and KWF Young Investigator at Leiden University. In addition to the Heineken Young Scientists Award, she has also received the KNAW Early Career Partnership (2021), the Dutch L’Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science Award (2019), and a KWF Young Investigator Grant (2018).

Anna van Duijvenvoorde

2022-09-05T10:11:48+02:00

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences has awarded the Heineken Young Scientists Award in the Social Sciences 2020 to Anna van Duijvenvoorde, a developmental psychologist at Leiden University. Van Duijvenvoorde is receiving the award for her research on the development of the brain and behaviour in adolescents.

The jury describes Anna van Duijvenvoorde as an outstanding researcher who is able to make her work accessible to a wider group of interested parties. She is curious and innovative, but also a bridge-builder who is part of an impressive network of top researchers. She inspires and supports young scientists. Above all, she is a researcher who dares to steer her own course, qualities that are indispensable for carrying out challenging top-class research and training young researchers.

Research on development of the brain
Van Duijvenvoorde’s research investigates how the brain and behaviour of teenagers change. During teenage years, the brain undergoes an important development. In this phase we learn to empathise better with others, and our peers become more important. Van Duijvenvoorde wants to know how these changes affect the choices that teenagers make. She attempts
to answer such questions as: Why teenagers do find unfamiliar risks interesting? How do they discover who they can trust? And what motivates them? Her work involves fundamental research but can have important social applications. For example, her research on how young people learn can help understand the impact of online education during the corona crisis.

About the laureate
Anna van Duijvenvoorde studied psychology at the University of Amsterdam, graduating cum laude in 2007. She also completed her PhD research in developmental psychology cum laude. While working on her PhD, she spent several months in New York, doing research at Colombia University and at the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology. Since 2019, she has been an associate professor in the Developmental and Educational Psychology Unit at Leiden University.
Van Duijvenvoorde has received numerous major grants for her research, including a Sara van Dam project grant from the Academy and an Open Research Area grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Video

Anna van Duijvenvoorde

Marie-José van Tol

2021-06-29T10:43:56+02:00

Dr Marie-José van Tol received the Heineken Young Scientists Award in the Social Sciences 2018 for studying the many factors that contribute to depression and other psychiatric disorders.
The jury recognised Marie-José van Tol as a talented, creative and passionate researcher who not only combines many different disciplines but also makes connections in other respects. She is one of the founders of the Young Academy Groningen and its current chairperson.
Dr Marie-José van Tol is assistant professor and principal investigator in the Neuropsychology faculty, part of the Department of Neuroscience at University Medical Center Groningen.
Van Tol studied clinical and medical psychology at Utrecht University. She received her PhD from Leiden University in 2011 for her MRI study of patients suffering depression or anxiety disorders.

Research
Marie-José van Tol is interested in unravelling the many factors that make people vulnerable to depression, anxiety, suicide, schizophrenia and other major psychiatric disorders. Her work is interdisciplinary in nature and combines knowledge and methods from clinical psychiatry, neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, neuroradiology, neuroscience and other fields.
In her quest to identify the underpinnings of psychological vulnerabilities, Van Tol explores a wide range of different influences. For example, her analyses allow for the presence of other psychiatric disorders, the course of the illness, the effects of treatments, genetic risk factors, personality factors and early trauma. She also makes use of innovative neuro-imaging techniques and analytical methods.

Video

Video interview with Marie-José van Tol

Jasper Poort

2021-06-29T10:46:47+02:00

Dr J. Poort is a post-doctoral researcher at The Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for neural circuits and behaviour at the Faculty of Life Sciences, University College London. He received the Heineken Young Scientists Award for Cognitive Science 2016 for his research on how our brains take rapid decisions by concentrating on the most important information available.
Jasper Poort studied psychology at Leiden University and cognitive neurosciences at Radboud University Nijmegen. He completed his PhD in 2012 at VU University Amsterdam for research that he had conducted at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, an Academy institute.
Poort’s work concerns a question that intrigues many cognitive scientists: how do our brains manage to process vast amounts of sensory input at lightning speed when deciding on a course of action? How is it that we can move safely from A to B through crowded streets full of buildings, billboards, traffic signs and other people and vehicles? How does the brain manage to focus on the most crucial input and ignore the rest? How do nerve cells and regions of the brain cope with the unending flood of information all around them?
Jasper Poort has published in such prestigious journals as Neuron and is the recipient of both an NWO VENI grant, an EU Marie Curie research grant and a UCL Excellence Fellowship grant. He is eager to discuss his work with non-scientists as well. For example, he has cooperated on the Dutch ‘Canon of Science’ and gives public lectures on brain research.

Video

Video interview with Jasper Poort, winner of the Heineken Young Scientists Award for Cognitive Science 2016

Martin A. Vinck

2021-06-29T10:49:04+02:00

Dr M. Vinck is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience, part of Yale University’s School of Medicine (New Haven, USA). He received the Heineken Young Scientists Award for Cognitive Science 2014 for his research into the role of electrical oscillation in cognitive processes.
Martin Vinck obtained his PhD at the University of Amsterdam in 2013, for his work on the relationship between electrical oscillations in brain cells and cognitive processes such as perception, memory and decision-making. He developed new mathematical methodologies that are now being applied by other researchers.
At Yale, Vinck is currently using oscillation techniques to study how cells in the primary visual cortex influence one another.
In 2013, Vinck was awarded a Rubicon Fellowship from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. He has also received Elsevier’s Scopus Young Researcher Award in the Life Sciences category.

QUOTE
‘I’m driven by the desire to discover patterns and sequences in complex data sets. There is a lot of beauty in the solutions that nature has come up with.’

Floris de Lange

2020-05-03T20:47:12+02:00

Floris de Lange received the Heineken Young Scientists Award for Cognitive Science 2012 for his research on visual perception and motorial imagery.
Dr De Lange received his PhD cum laude at Radboud University Nijmegen. After rounding off his postdoctoral research abroad, he quickly built up a research group at that university’s Donders Institute. He now has some forty publications to his name and has received a number of research grants, including recently a “Top Talent” grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). In the words of the jury, Dr De Lange displays intellectual depth and an understanding of virtually all areas of cognition, making him one of the most talented cognitive scientists currently working.

Paola Escudero

2020-05-03T20:57:22+02:00

Paola Escudero received the Heineken Young Scientists Award for Cognitive Science 2010 for her research on second language speech learning.
Her PhD research at the University of Utrecht concerned phonological categories in polyglots. Paola Escudero has developed a model within the context of Optimality Theory that describes the cognitive processes that speakers go through when forming sounds that are unknown in their native language. As a postdoc, she is currently conducting psycholinguistic research in order to test her theoretical model experimentally. Paola Escudero works at the University of Amsterdam.

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