A personal touch of Viola Klück

25 January 2018

My name is Viola Klück, Dutch, started first of May as a PhD candidate at the laboratory of Experimental Internal Medicine in the theme Inflammatory disease.

Within this theme I am studying the mechanisms by which urate and MSU crystals (crystallized form of urate) lead to inflammation. This is very important for gout and associated diseases such as cardiovascular diseases.

When you were a kid what did you want to be when you grew up? Can you tell us something about your child years.  

I do not remember why, but as a kid, I wanted to become a physician. As I grew older, I became interested in a 1000 different things so I had a hard time choosing what to study after secondary school. Until the day I encountered an old teacher from primary school. She reminded me of my passion to study medicine. I am still very happy with that choice!

What was your previous academic training, where did you study and why that study? 

During medical school at the Radboud University, I soon realized that I did not want to become a physician only obeying guidelines. Therefore I looked for other (scientific) challenges during my bachelor and master, following the Honours Programme Medical Sciences for instance.

The RIMLS motto is “Today’s molecules for tomorrow’s medicine”. What does this mean for you? 

As an MD, that is one of the things I like most about science: If you focus on a mechanism and figure out how to influence that pathway, it can have great beneficial consequences for a lot of patients.

Who is your great example as scientists? And please give a motivation why.

Marie Curie. She was a great and passionate scientist, although not always recognized by men.   

Which research discovery that you have made has made you most proud? 

I will answer this question at the end of my PhD;)

Given unlimited finance what experiment would you perform?

 lot of –omics (Genomics, Proteomics, and Metabolomics) to get a broad overview of all the effects of urate. And of course a bioinformation to help interpret all that data.

What does your working area (desk, office) look like and what does it say about you (or your research)?

Usually quit messy, once a week/two weeks I try to clean up. In parallel, I perform a lot of experiments and then organize all the results to make new plans.

Nominate a colleague to be in the spotlight and what would you like to ask him or her?

Jorge Domínguez Andrés, what is it like to move to the Netherlands for a post-doc position?

What type of person are you, quick insights:

a) Mac or PC?                                : PC
b) Theater or cinema?                 : cinema
c) Dine out or dine in?                 : dine out
d) Ferrari or Fiat?                          : Fiat (500, light blue)
e) Shopaholic or chocoholic?      : chocoholic
f) Culture or Nature                      : nature