About R.H. (Rosa) Mulder, PhD
Introduction
As a researcher, I am interested in how early life stress can get ‘under the skin’. Having a background in Neurobiology as well as Psychology, I study how genes and the environment act together on biological pathways to affect mental health.
During my PhD, I focused on epigenetic pathways, studying how our epigenome changes throughout life and its associations with stress. Currently, I take a multi-omic approach, studying how genes and stress may affect our epigenome, our gut microbiome and our brain. As a registered epidemiologist, I use data from large population-based studies to perform my research, including the paediatric cohort of Generation R and that of the British Avon Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and Childhood.
My international network includes researchers at the Integrative Epidemiological Unit of the University of Bristol and the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Lab of the University of Barcelona, places I have both worked at. Moreover, I work in multiple international consortia, including the Methylation, Imaging and Neurodevelopment (MIND) consortium and the Pregnancy and Childhood Epigenetics (PACE) consortium. I believe that these large collaborative networks enable us to ask and answer big questions regarding stress and mental health development.
During my PhD, I focused on epigenetic pathways, studying how our epigenome changes throughout life and its associations with stress. Currently, I take a multi-omic approach, studying how genes and stress may affect our epigenome, our gut microbiome and our brain. As a registered epidemiologist, I use data from large population-based studies to perform my research, including the paediatric cohort of Generation R and that of the British Avon Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and Childhood.
My international network includes researchers at the Integrative Epidemiological Unit of the University of Bristol and the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Lab of the University of Barcelona, places I have both worked at. Moreover, I work in multiple international consortia, including the Methylation, Imaging and Neurodevelopment (MIND) consortium and the Pregnancy and Childhood Epigenetics (PACE) consortium. I believe that these large collaborative networks enable us to ask and answer big questions regarding stress and mental health development.
Field(s) of expertise
Epigenetics is a biological pathway that is of particular interest to me. For example, I performed the largest study to date on how our epigenome changes from birth to early adulthood. Other biological substrates that I study are, amongst others, the brain and the microbiome. I often combine multiple ‘omics data types, for example in a recent multi-cohort study I led on genomic by prenatal stress interactions on the newborn’s epigenome, which included over 32 billion regression analyses.
As such, I have performed multiple (epi)genome-wide association studies (EWAS & GWAS), longitudinal modeling on an ‘omic scale, machine learning techniques, multi-omic studies, and neuroimaging studies.
As such, I have performed multiple (epi)genome-wide association studies (EWAS & GWAS), longitudinal modeling on an ‘omic scale, machine learning techniques, multi-omic studies, and neuroimaging studies.
Education and career
I have a bachelor in Psychology as well as Neurobiology, and a Research Master (cum laude) in Psychology. In my PhD (Leiden University & Erasmus Medical Center), I studied how our epigenome changes throughout life and its associations with stress. Since my PhD, I have held various postdoctoral positions at labs in different countries, studying stress in combination with different biological substrates. Moreover, I obtained a University Teaching Qualification (Basis Kwalificatie Onderwijs; BKO) and Epidemiologist B certificate (Vereniging voor Epidemiologie).
Publications
View my publications here.
Teaching activities
Among others, I have supervised over 10 bachelor and master students in their theses, have taught Genetics and Biochemistry at the Biology studies of the University of Amsterdam, have given guest lectures at the Psychology study of Erasmus University and Netherlands Institute for Health Sciences (NIHES) of the Erasmus Medical Center, and have developed, organized and taught an 18-hour course on genetics and epigenetics at the Psychology department of the University of Gdansk, Poland. My teaching experience and training in teaching have culminated in a University Teaching Qualification.
Scholarships, grants, and awards
- 2017: Van der Gaag Grant of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, KNAW), for a fellowship at Bristol University, UK (€6,600)
- 2017: Travel grant for 6th Haruv International PhD Workshop on Child Maltreatment in Jerusalem, Israel
- 2019: Travel grant Epigenomics for Common Diseases conference in Cambridge, UK
- 2021: Ter Meulen Grant of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, KNAW), for a fellowship at Universitat de Barcelona, Spain (€9,800)
- 2022: AFAR – Hevolution grant (Americ Federation of Aging Research) to study precursors and health outcomes of early epigenetic age acceleration in Generation R and ALSPAC (€374,900; share €245,000).
- 2025: Sophia grant (Sophia Stichting Wetenschappelijk onderzoek) for PhD project to study emerging psychopathology in offspring and siblings at familial high- and low-risk for mental illness (€299,750, co-applicant)
