Team
Green Labs NL was founded in 2021 by members of the Dutch Scientific community with a passion for sustainability. The people that run Green Labs NL do this next to their own jobs. Scroll down to meet the team!
Hannah Johnson
Hey, my name is Hannah and I work as a lab manager and technician at the Princess Máxima Center in Utrecht. My team focuses on using advanced imaging techniques to Visualise the Unexpected! The natural beauty of the world is a great love of mine so trying to maintain it by reducing my footprint on the planet is a constant goal in my private life. I often feel at odds with how this plays out at work however, so getting involved with Green labs NL was a no brainer for me. We want to save lives and be healthy, so lets make sure we have a healthy, beautiful planet to do it on!
Florijn Dekkers
What inspires me most is the beauty of nature. I am a senior postdoc and part of the Green Labs Initiative at the Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology. Embedded in the DREAM3DLAB, my work focusses on developing advanced 3D imaging technologies to better understand and tackle the aggressive nature of cancer. Like many of us working in science, I feel a great urge to perform my work with a minimal impact on the environment and I am therefore excited to build a community that strives to create a world where science is green.
Jey McCaughey
My name is Jey. After a PhD and postdoc on cellular transport and organisatioin using super-resolution microscopy techniques. I am now the project coordinator of the gravitational project “Innovative Microscopy And Guidance of cells In their Native Environment” aka IMAGINE! based at Utrecht University. I was always fascinated by nature and how its complex processes work, which was the reason for me to choose this career path. Nature is beautiful, complex, powerful and at the moment also very fragile. We should do the best we can to try and save it and our planet, so that we and others yet to come can keep enjoying and exploring this world with all its wonders. With Green Labs NL, I hope I can contribute to making a difference and help fellow researchers with the daily challenge of making scientific lab work more sustainable.
Gabriela Dankova
I work at Naturalis Biodiversity Center within a project applying genomic tools for biodiversity monitoring. I was always hugely in love with nature. That was one of the reasons why I decided to study biology and became a researcher. However, performing lab-based research comes with a lot of energy use and waste production, which can be detrimental to our natural world. Therefore, I feel a need to make my work more environmentally-friendly and I am very excited about the growing number of activities promoting more sustainable research, such as Green Labs NL. I believe that by working together we can really make a difference!
Marit de Kort
Hi there! My name is Marit and I am a policy officer at the Biomedical Master’s programmes at Utrecht University. In my private life I actively try to minimize my carbon footprint. This was in stark contrast to my lab work as a PhD student, where I created a lot of waste and used a lot of resources every day. I think it’s really important that we, scientists, take responsibility and collectively start working on the issue of sustainability in our labs. I’m excited to contribute by working with Green Labs NL towards more sustainable labs in the future.
Rolf Slaats
Hello, I am Rolf and I currently work as a Post Doc at the University of Twente. My scientific focus is on the development of stem cell-based in vitro models to study cardiac diseases and toxicities, so I am mostly working in “wet” labs culturing cells. It is in these labs that I realized how big our footprint on the environment is as scientists, since we consume large amounts of disposable plastics and electricity. This motivated me to focus my energy on reducing our impact on the planet as much as I can whilst still performing science. At Green Labs NL, we can make a difference by educating the scientific community in how to be scientifically successful and sustainable at the same time. I am proud to be a part of that movement.
