Environmental science has always been a passion of mine. In 2016 I started my Bachelor Soil, Water, Atmosphere at Wageningen University, The Netherlands. The combination of subjects gave me a broad understanding of Environmental Science, but also showed me that my interest was based in water quality. After finishing my bachelor thesis on Water quality of a Dutch lake, I received my bachelor’s degree in 2019.

With this newfound enthusiasm for water quality, I started my master’s Earth and Environment at Wageningen University that same year. I specialised in biology and chemistry of soil and water, with a focus on water quality. As part of this master’s programme, I wrote my thesis at NIOO (The Netherlands Institute of Ecology). In this thesis I showed how Internal phosphorus loading in lakes was modelled and how changing it could possibly improve the accuracy in the mathematical and ecological model PCLake+. This is where my introduction to ecological models happened, which made me interested in the modelling side of Environmental Science.

Next to that, I did an academic Internship at the Dutch Waterboard ‘Aa en Maas’ where my research was on travel times of water and substances through a catchment among other water related queries. I got to know the governmental side of research in this internship. After my internship I graduated with a master’s degree in 2021.

Now starting with my InventWater project I hope to gain more experience with modelling and earth observation tools, specifically on water quality-based problems. Furthermore, get to know the research environment from a different perspective.