Sander Lamballais

Hi, my name is Sander Lamballais. I have received formal training in Psychology (BSc), Neuroscience (MSc) and Genetic Epidemiology (MSc). Over the years, I have been involved in designing and conducting a myriad of studies. My earlier work focused on embodied cognition, where I attempted to expand the scope of the field by focusing on the peripheral nervous system. Later, I spent several years working with mouse models to experimentally dissect the behavioral and neural constructs of social behavior. For my PhD I focused on something entirely different: population-based neuroimaging and the aging brain. I aimed to understand the causes and consequences of brain development and deterioriation. I did so by utilizing data from existing cohorts (e.g. Generation R, ABCD, Rotterdam Study and UKBB) and developing novel tools that integrate epidemiological principles into neuroimaging (e.g. QDECR). Furthermore, I was the lead PhD in designing, conducting and analyzing data from the ORACLE Study, a substudy of the Generation R cohort that has included over 2000 parents. I am awaiting my PhD defense. 

I started as a postdoc in the Adams Lab in 2020. My projects primarily focus on methodology within the fields of genetics and genomics, and application of genetics in the fields of Neurobiology, Neurology and Psychiatry. For the methodological projects, I am working on developing novel methods and modifying existing methods to further utilize publicly available data to further elucidate genetic mechanisms. For the applied projects, I aim to utilize multivariate methods to understanding the role of genetics in broad spectra of outcomes, including high-dimensional structural and functional MRI data as well as psychiatric disorders. I further contribute in the design and conduct of other projects in the Adams lab, including projects on polygenic risk scores, genome-wide association studies and cell-free DNA.