Manouk Vrieling

Research Fellow

Manouk joined the Fitzgerald lab as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the summer of 2017. She studied host-pathogen interactions in Staphylococcus aureus infections, aiming to optimise innate host defence to combat antimicrobial resistance.

She was trained as a veterinarian at Utrecht University (The Netherlands). As an undergraduate student, she investigated bovine T lymphocyte traffic at the Immunology Department of the Veterinary Faculty in Utrecht. She obtained her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree with honour in 2012 and subsequently moved to the lab of Prof. Jos van Strijp at the University Medical Center Utrecht to perform her PhD research in the field of Microbiology. During her PhD, she studied the species specificity of the staphylococcal leukocidins and investigated their potential as vaccine targets for bovine S. aureus mastitis.

In her spare time Manouk likes to go outdoors to cycle or hike, but her absolutely favourite activity is to go speed skating with the Forth Valley Ice Speed Club.

In the summer of 2019, Manouk  joined  Wageningen Bioveterinary Research as a Molecular Microbiology Researcher, although she remains in collaboration for some of the work she was involved in during her time in LBEP.