Maaike went to medical school at Leiden University and graduated in March 2020, after which she started a joint PhD project between the University of Edinburgh and Leiden University (the Netherlands) in April 2020. Her PhD focuses several aspects of viral infectious disease and infectious disease outbreaks, such as infectious disease surveillance. Moreover, she is currently enrolled in a master’s degree in epidemiology, where she focuses on causality using observational datasets. Maaike is supervised by Prof Kenneth Baillie in Edinburgh and Dr. Geert Groeneveld and Prof Leo Visser in Leiden