Executive board

Back to Home

Annelotte Mudde

Chairperson

Annelotte is a Dutch PhD candidate at the UCL Institute of Child Health. She graduated from medical school at Leiden University and worked as a clinician in a paediatric hospital in the Netherlands before she started her PhD. She has always enjoyed combining clinical work with research. Her current research project focusses on gene therapy approaches for primary immunodeficiencies.

When she is not busy in the lab or on the wards, Annelotte loves to play sports. She has been a tennis player since she was young and more recently started road cycling. She goes on long hikes or cycling trips with friends. However, she won’t say no to a relaxing afternoon at the museum or at a cosy café.

Grace Gong

Grace Gong

Communications Officer

Grace is a postdoc at the UCL Cancer Institute working on anticancer drug discovery projects in collaboration with Pharma. Her main focus is on designing and characterising modulators of kinases as anticancer therapies, using a combination of molecular modelling, medicinal chemistry, structural biology, biochemistry and cell biology. These multi-disciplinary drug discovery projects allow her to work with scientists from a broad range of backgrounds, and expose her to various sections of the translational medicine pipeline.

Outside of science, Grace is a pianist, singer and song-writer. She enjoys orchestral concerts and musicals, and often use music to relax and stimulate new ideas.

Thomas Benoist

Thomas Benoist

Operations Manager

Thomas is a French 2nd year PhD student at the UCL Institute of Child Health. He initially studied a Master of Pharmacy at UCL, and qualified as a pharmacist. However, his goal always has been to pursue scientific research. His PhD is in Regenerative Medicine and Tissue Engineering. Its objective is improving current artificial organ production technology, focusing on tissue vascularization. The final goal is to find a solution to organ transplant shortages with increased availability and no associated graft rejections.
His interests in translational medicine are mainly around the field of Biotechnology and finds it fascinating to be able to take advantage of the wonderful capabilities of the living to develop new medical technologies.
In his spare time, he enjoys discovering more about my scientific interests, listening to and playing music (he’s a singer and guitarist), going for a run or walk and meeting up with friends.

Nina de Gruijter

Treasurer

After graduating medical school in the Netherlands in 2019, Nina moved to London, where she is now a PhD student at the Centre for Adolescent Rheumatology Versus Arthritis at UCL, UCLH and GOSH. Her research focuses on how changes in the cholesterol metabolism influence B cells – the cells that produce the antibodies that make people with autoimmune diseases sick – in young people with autoimmune diseases, specifically juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) and juvenile systemic lupus erythematosus (JSLE). Nina hopes to find out if we can influence the cholesterol metabolism to reduce inflammation in patients. This last bit is very important to her; as a doctor, Nina believes research should intend to improve patients’ lives!

Nina is a certified yoga teacher, and enjoys practicing yoga several times a week. She also likes spending time with loved ones, cooking, baking, and cold sunny days.