I was confronted with heart disease very early on. My father only knew his father for two years, and at six I thought I was farewelling my 38-year-old father at his hospital bed. Fortunately, medicine pulled him through in the early eighties.

From a young age I was fascinated with biology and health sciences, and originally wanted to study medicine. When funding for my studies became an issue, I decided to study a general BSc degree with Human Physiology as my major. I have never looked back and ended up working in clinical population-based studies, general epidemiology and public health with a specific focus on hypertension (high blood pressure) and cardiovascular disease. By choosing this direction of work I am not limited to helping just one patient at a time, but instead I am able to contribute towards treating entire populations at a given time.