PhD candidates Liana Barenbrug and Judith Lefkes receive a Christine Mohrmann Stipend, together with eight other female PhD candidates from Radboud University. The aim of the stipend is to encourage PhD candidates to continue their academic careers after the completion of their thesis. The stipend worth 6000 euros gives them the opportunity, for example, to spend a period at a university abroad or to deepen their research in another way. Since 1990, the Executive Board of Radboud University has awarded the Christine Mohrmann Stipends annually to promising female PhD candidates.
Judith Lefkes - artificial intelligence in the biomedical field
Judith Lefkes investigates how artificial intelligence in the biomedical field can evolve from narrow algorithms that perform a single specific task to broader, more generally applicable models. These models are trained on large amounts of diverse data, such as pathology and radiology images and clinical reports. Within a collaborative project, she developed a transparent and reproducible benchmark platform, launched as an international challenge, where teams can test their algorithms on various clinically relevant tasks using real-world patient cohorts. In her current project, Judith develops and evaluates AI models for the automatic generation of pathology reports. She also designs clinically grounded evaluation metrics to assess the quality of AI-generated reports. With the stipend, she will conduct six months of research at Harvard Medical School.
Liana Barenbrug – research into psoriasis
Liana Barenbrug investigates psoriasis, a chronic inflammatory skin condition, from a women’s health perspective, addressing sex differences, pregnancy and menopause. A major knowledge gap in this field is the safety of medications during pregnancy, while effective disease control is essential to reduce the risk of adverse pregnancy and neonatal outcomes. Evaluating drug safety in pregnancy requires specialized epidemiological methods. The Christine Mohrmann Stipend will support her in gaining this expertise through an international research visit and collaboration with experienced researchers.
The other alureates are Lisa Kampen, Wieke Harmsen, Puck Overhaart, Eline Bovy, Yvet Telgenkamp, Sophie van Dongen, Gijsje Maas and Josefine Schedlowski.
In this photo (l-r): Liana Barenbrug, dean Jan Smit, Judith Lefkes.
