By Vladimir Tichelaar, Postdoc in TREC
Hei! Jeg heter Vladimir Tichelaar og skal jobbe i TREC fra desember 2014 til oktober 2015.
As you see I am learning Norwegian and I like it! I am lucky that it is not so different from Dutch, although listening is still difficult. Because I started working at TREC before Christmas, I was allowed to join you all at Julebord and Julelunch- which was great fun!
I like living in Tromsø, the city is sparkling and the surrounding nature is amazing. Now I am waiting for a good snow so I can start hiking and skiing. Last november, I saw some humpback whales and I did dogsledding! Al those things we do not have in the Netherlands, but Tromsø reminds me of my hometown (Groningen) because so much is happening, there are a lot of students and of course because of the many pubs.
My PhD-thesis in the Netherlands was about venous thrombosis and inflammation. I discovered that even from a simple cold or small food poisoning you got an increased risk for venous thrombosis! Other inflammatory or infectious diseases did increase the risk of deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism are HIV and inflammatory bowel disease, for example. When these patients quit medications or when they have a flare-up of their disease, they are at great risk for it! We now try to discover which patients might need medication to prevent venous thrombosis. As I am a medical doctor too, I use my knowledge of the field and new research topics to tell them about the disease and how we think it could have happened or prevented in the future.
At TREC I will coach some (MD-) PhD-students and also roll out two studies myself. I want to look if there is a relation between the bacteria in the oral cavity and the gut on one hand, and activation of coagulation / venous thrombosis on the other. For this study, I will start asking patients who have had a first venous thrombosis to participate. So, you might see me at the university hospital!
Vennlig Hilsen,
Vladimir
https://nl.linkedin.com/in/vladimirtichelaar
