Niels Krämer

Niels Krämer

Phd Student
Visiting address: Solnavägen 9, 17165 Stockholm
Postal address: C5 Cell- och molekylärbiologi, C5 CMB Spalding, 171 77 Stockholm

About me

  • Originally from Megchelen, the Netherlands (a small village on the German
    border), I studied Medical Biology [1] at the Radboud University Nijmegen.
    During my time there I was actively involved in different student
    associations and teaching, and I have been the student representative on the
    educational board of Biosciences. My focus has always been on endocrinology,
    molecular biology and physiology, both in courses and the research projects.
    During my master’s I have executed two research projects under the guidance
    of two great scientists, leading to the wish to further develop myself as a
    scientist during a PhD programme. For the first project, I went to California
    to run a project in the lab of Dr. Mark Huising [2] at UC Davis where I
    studied similarities between pancreatic islet and hypothalamic glucose
    regulation. My second project was back home in Nijmegen at the Radboud
    Institute for Molecular Life Sciences in the lab of Dr. Klaas Mulder [3]
    where I developed a computational analysis toolkit to investigate
    EGF-signalling after single cell immune-detection by sequencing.
    In September 2020, I moved to Stockholm to start a doctoral project in the
    lab of Dr. Kirsty Spalding [4] at the Karolinska Institute. Here I divide my
    time between lab work, computational biology and teaching.
    Prize for “Best M.Sc. thesis of the faculty of Science 2020” at the
    Radboud University Nijmegen
    M.Sc. in Medical Biology, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands (2018
    – 2020)
    B.Sc. in Biology, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands (2014– 2018)
    [1] https://www.ru.nl/english/education/masters/medical-biology/
    [2] https://huisinglab.com/
    [3] https://www.ru.nl/science/rimls/research/molecular-developmental-biology/mulder-team/
    [4] https://www.spaldinglab.org/

Research

  • The research of our lab focuses on properties of human adipose tissue, with
    particular attention to adipocyte biology. Basic functions, such as adipocyte
    lipid and cell turnover, adipocyte cell biology, adipocyte responses to
    obesity and hyperinsulinemia, and cellular heterogeneity are investigated.
    The ultimate aim our lab, is to better understand the contributions of
    adipocytes to health and pathology.
    I have a small, but exciting part in contributing to this aim as I study the
    browning capacity of different white adipose tissue depots. Browning is a
    process in which normal fat cells are “reprogrammed” to burn lipid
    instead of storing it. As such, it is viewed as a potential avenue of
    treating obesity in the future. This process is well-described in rodents,
    but information about humans is lacking. I study this process on isolated
    mature adipocytes, using fluorescence microscopy and other molecular biology
    techniques.

Teaching

  • -Lecturer in the master’s course /Bioinformatics/ (KI, 2021 – present).
    -Teaching Assistant in the bachelor’s course /Cell-, Stem Cell and
    Developmental Biology /(KI, 2020)
    -Developing new (grading) procedures for the research internships of the
    masters of the Bioscience institute (Radboud University, 2019 – 2020)
    -Developing research proposal- and literature review courses for the masters
    of the Bioscience institute (Radboud University, 2018 – 2019)
    -Teaching Assistant in several bachelor’s courses in physiology (Radboud
    University, 2017 – 2019)

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