Stichting Ammodo, For arts, architecture and science

The Computational Pathology Group (Radboud University / Radboudumc) is developing software models based on artificial intelligence (AI) that can help pathologists diagnose tumours. The group was one of the first in the world to demonstrate that AI can match and even exceed the performance of human experts in specific diagnostic tasks.

The team is currently working on the world’s first virtual pathologist, ANTONI. This AI model is not only capable of making accurate diagnoses for conditions such as breast, prostate, and kidney cancer, but can also reveal the reasoning behind the diagnoses. This can help medical professionals make reliable diagnoses more efficiently and make the most appropriate treatment decisions for their patients faster.

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The Psychological Methods Lab (University of Amsterdam) is committed to avoiding ‘model myopia’ in psychology, or the idea that only one correct interpretation of research data is possible. Instead, they emphasise the power of diverse models and argue that methodological diversity is crucial for reliable science. The team develops robust statistics to gain more accurate insights from psychological datasets.

One example is their novel network approach to psychological disorders, in which symptoms and causes are viewed as a complex system of interactions between variables. The team shares their innovative models worldwide via JASP, their self-developed and widely used open-source statistical software package.

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Stan Brouns is engaged in fundamental research into the age-old battle between microbes and viruses. In particular, he studies the so-called CRISPR-Cas defence mechanisms that bacteria deploy to arm themselves against viruses.

Thanks to Brouns’ research we now know that bacteria possess a smart, adaptive immune system that can remember and render invaders harmless.

In addition, Brouns is leading an innovative study of bacteriophages, the natural enemies of bacteria, as a possible alternative to antibiotics.

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Hugo Snippert uses microscopy and molecular genetics to unravel how it is that there is a huge diversity of tumour cells and what the consequences of this are.

He was one of the first researchers to apply microscopy to organoids – mini-organs grown in the lab – enabling biological processes in living cells to be studied in detail.

He recently succeeded in using organoid technology to track how a colon tumour responds to combined drug treatment. This knowledge helps towards the tailoring of individual cancer therapies.

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Research group iHub from Radboud University Nijmegen focuses on urgent questions arising from the increasing digitalisation of our society. How does one develop technology that promotes privacy? What are the risks to society now that large tech companies are playing an increasingly active role in the public sector?

iHub identifies which social values are threatened by digitalisation and what can be done to protect these values. The group also designs and develops technology that embeds and protects public values.

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Rivke Jaffe conducts research on urban space and everyday urban life. She has published on topics including crime and citizenship in Jamaica, the popular culture of illegality, and public-private security arrangements. Jaffe explores how technologies that are supposed to lead to increased security – such as guns, barbed wire, cameras and algorithms, but also animals such as police dogs – can simultaneously reproduce or increase social inequality.

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Lisa Herzog analyses how moral and democratic norms can play a greater role in our economic system. What does it mean to act morally when employees feel like small cogs in the wheel of a large organisation? Herzog explores socially relevant issues such as these, always looking at the economic system from a philosophical perspective.

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Past ❤ Play (Leiden University) conducts innovative humanities research into contemporary experience of cultural heritage and how the concept of play can contribute to a deeper understanding of the past. The team discovered that when local communities are actively engaged with the heritage in their environment through play, a stronger connection to these places emerges.

In addition, the team researches historical play practices, for example by having participants play board games from ancients times. This brings new insight into past playing habits and what experiences were associated with them.

As a next step, the team will conduct ethnographic fieldwork in the Netherlands, Morocco and Jamaica to further map different gaming practices and approaches to heritage.

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Tazuko van Berkel researches self-image, humanity, and worldview in classical Greek society and in particular how the advent of the money economy affected the Greek idea of friendship.

She is currently focusing her research on how the economic domain was defined in antiquity, not only by scholars, but also in the everyday views of citizens.

Van Berkel’s research invites critical reflection on economic thinking in our own time.

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Merel Keijzer researches how learning a new language contributes to healthy ageing. To do so, she uses innovative and multidisciplinary research methods and works closely with neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists.

Keijzer has shown that people who are multilingual, and who still actively used their languages, generally showed better cognitive functioning. In particular, frequent switching between different languages seems to be able to compensate for ageing processes in the brain, such as mild memory loss.

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Daniël Lakens studies how scientists conduct research, with the aim of increasing the reliability and efficiency of social science research.

He played an important role in investigating the global ‘replication crisis’ in psychology, and thanks to his empirical and theoretical analyses, scientific awareness of ‘publication bias’ and ‘p-hacking’ has grown considerably in recent years.

Over the past decade, Lakens has become one of the leading scientists in meta-science in the Netherlands and abroad.

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For ten years, research group Omnes Pro Uno of Utrecht University has had the mission of seeking to find a cure for patients with a genetic disease before irreversible damage occurs in the body. The researchers have succeeded in growing mini-organs from almost all tissues in the human body so that treatments can be tested and genetic errors corrected.

The next ambitious step is for Omnes Pro Uno to be the first in the world to correct the genetic cause of diseases directly in the bodies of patients via the bloodstream, before the disease has an opportunity adversely to affect the body.

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Patricia Dankers designs, synthesizes, and investigates synthetic biomaterials that can control, mimic or even surpass complex biological processes in the human body. Using intelligent chemistry ageing or damaged tissue can be repaired. It is part due to her fundamental research that heart valves and vascular grafts made of synthetic biodegradable biomaterials exist, as well as synthetic hydrogels for the culture of stem cells.

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Floris de Lange studies how human perception arises from neurobiological processes in the brain. By measuring brain activity very precisely, he determines how information “flows” through the brain. Among other things, he has shown that our brain works like a prediction machine, actively using everything it learns to predict the future. Recently, De Lange has been studying why curiosity and surprise are important to the brain.

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The Lipidomics Team (University of Groningen) is studying lipid molecules to develop reliable diagnostic tests and effective vaccines against tuberculosis. With more than one and a half million deaths annually, tuberculosis is the deadliest bacterial infectious disease worldwide. Thanks to their innovative research, this group has gained insights into how tuberculosis bacteria survive in the human body using a clever trick to bypass the immune system.

The team expects insights gained here to help them map other important bacterial pathogens. The next step is to set up a research programme on newly discovered lipids in the bacteria that cause typhoid fever, blood poisoning and skin infections.

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Tatiana Filatova researches the complex dynamics between socio-economic systems and climate change, seeking, among other things, to predict societies’ responses to different climate scenarios.

A distinctive feature of her research is the use of existing knowledge from the social sciences to enrich traditional climate models. For example, using computer simulations Filatova has shown that gradual poverty traps and ghettos may arise in climate-sensitive areas, including in rich countries.

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Jingyuan Fu studies the gut microbiome in relation to disease and health, focusing in particular on complex diseases such as obesity and cardiovascular disease.

She impressively demonstrated, for example, that the gut microbiome can be manipulated by both dietary interventions and certain drugs. This makes the microbiome an important starting point for disease prevention and treatment.

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Anja Spang studies the special role that various micro-organisms such as archaea have played in major evolutionary changes, including the origin of eukaryotes to which humans belong. She has discovered an impressive number of new archaea variants in recent years and has found revolutionary evidence in support of the hypothesis that eukaryotic organisms (such as humans) once evolved from a symbiosis between archaea and bacteria.

What makes Spang’s research especially relevant at present is that archaea also influence the climate. Exactly what their role there is is a question that Spang plans to focus on in the near future.

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Walter Immerzeel researches climate change in mountainous regions in Asia and its consequences for the availability of water for the millions of people living downstream. Immerzeel was the first to map the water cycle in the high mountains of the Himalayas. Over the next few years, he aims to understand thoroughly how natural disasters in mountain areas are related to their location and extreme weather, focusing on landslides, avalanches and glacial lakes.

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Louis Vermeulen studies how derailments in the genetic material of stem cells can cause colon cancer. In doing so, he focuses specifically on the earliest development of tumors. He combines biochemistry and genetics with mathematical and physical models to map the dynamics of stem cells. With his innovative approach, he has made a major contribution to fundamental concepts within molecular oncology.

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Christian Lange studies classical Arabic and Persian literature and is a pioneer in the field of Arabic digital humanities. His innovative analysis of digitized historical texts has yielded new insights, including into how Islamic criminal law was actually applied and how the five senses were understood throughout the centuries in different intellectual Islamic traditions. Lange’s research provides a multicoloured picture of the rich Islamic civilization.

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