She received her MSc in Cognitive Science and Technology, with a major in Language and Speech Technology, from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. After working in software development for a few years she returned to science, and Groningen, to pursue a PhD in Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience, on the topic of Listening Effort in Cochlear Implant Users. Her scientific field of interest is ‘Auditory Cognition’: a fairly new, interdisciplinary field of research in which cognitive and experimental psychology, neuroscience, audiology, linguistics, and more, come together to study hearing, hearing impairment, and speech comprehension, and their interaction with cognition. Her research has mainly centered on cochlear-implant hearing, but also included side projects on second-language speech perception and verbal response-time.