Isabelle van der Velpen, M.D., Ph.D.

Isabelle van der Velpen, M.D., Ph.D. (she/her), joined DCEG as a postdoctoral fellow in the Radiation Epidemiology Branch in September 2024. She will be studying associations between radiation exposure and neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative outcomes under the mentorship of Cari Kitahara, Ph.D.

Prior to joining DCEG, Dr. van der Velpen worked at the National Institute of Mental Health working on neuroimaging research in neurodevelopmental disorders. Dr. Van der Velpen earned her Ph.D. in epidemiology from the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Netherlands in 2023 and a master’s degree in health sciences in 2021. She earned her M.D. from Leiden University, Netherlands in 2018 and a master’s degree in vitality and ageing from the Leyden Academy on Vitality and Ageing, Leiden in 2015. For her doctoral work, she studied longitudinal associations between social health and brain structure in older adults and explored potential underlying biological mechanisms.