Episode 35: The Brains Behind the Barriers

Dr. Susan Roelofs is the CEO and founder of Locsense B.V., a pioneering laboratory equipment company situated in Enschede, Netherlands. There, she is responsible for strategy and operations. Dr. Roelofs obtained her MSc. degree in Applied Physics from the University of Twente with a specialization in Biophysical Engineering. She completed her PhD in Lab-on-Chip technology at the University of Twente in 2015.

Locsense focuses on the development of in-vitro sensing equipment. Currently Locsense’ team consists of 10 persons. Since 2019, Locsense has successfully launched new products, including their flagship device, the Artemis Impedance spectrometer / TEER detector.

At Locsense, Eline Geervliet, bridges the gap between scientific research and practical applications. There, her primary goal is to improve in vitro detection of several toxicological models, thereby reducing the necessity for in vivo testing. Eline Geervliet completed her PhD at the University of Twente, in close collaboration with RWTH Aachen, where she developed novel in vitro models to mimic different organs to investigated novel therapeutic targets. She received her Masters at the University of Twente, where she investigated pH-responsive smart polymersomes for MMP-1 delivery and treatment of liver cirrhosis.

David Yarmosh is a lead bioinformatician in ATCC’s Sequencing and Bioinformatics Center. He’s a graduate of New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. He has been working in large data aggregation and analysis since 2013 and microbial genomics with a focus on biosurveillance R&D efforts since 2016. David has led international training exercises in Peru and Senegal, sharing metagenomic analytical capabilities. His interests include genomics database construction, metadata collection, drug resistance mechanisms, bioinformatics standards, and machine learning. Since joining ATCC in 2020, David has worked extensively in SARS-CoV-2 classification, epidemiology, and genomics evaluation, including enhanced and uniform variant reporting. He has contributed more broadly to genomics reporting and analytical standardization and he has helped develop the podcast Behind the Biology, which he now hosts.