Dr I.M.N. Wortel (Inge)

In contrast to the popular Dutch saying “meten is weten” (“data equals knowledge”), gathering data is only the first step towards learning something new. This is especially important in (human) biology: important processes like immunology and cancer growth are incredibly complex. Even though technological developments allow us to gather increasing amounts of data on these processes, this does not mean we truly know how they work. And yet, this understanding is crucial: to develop new therapies or to reliably predict which medicine will help a patient most, we need to better understand these processes.

As a researcher and teacher at the interface of computational biology and (applied) data science, I therefore work on methods that can translate all these sources of data into usable knowledge of biological systems. I do this through a combination of data-driven research and model-driven research in the form of computer simulations, to reliably derive new knowledge. I also create software to make these tools as accessible as possible for other scientists and for students.

To maximise the impact of this work, I also invest in interdisciplinary communication and teach students the art of modelling and scientific thinking.