I have been working on this for four months now, and I haven’t actually put a single word on paper. Well, that’s not entirely true.
As of January 1, 2026, I started as an external PhD candidate at Vrije Universiteit. Joris Koene, Professor of Integrative Biology at VU Amsterdam and program director of the Biology bachelor’s degree, is my supervisor. Joris and I go back a while; he originally reached out to me through mutual connections to create an anatomical 3D model of his research subject, the great pond snail (Lymnaea stagnalis). Because we both felt there was more potential there, he also became the scientific director when Paul Schilperoord and I founded the company Anitomical.
With Anitomical, we want to achieve what I have dreamed of for much of my professional life: ensuring there is a truly accessible application where people can actually learn animal anatomy and compare different species, with the confidence that what they are seeing is scientifically accurate. I have been professionally involved in animal anatomy since 2012, and what strikes me is that many of the genuinely high-quality anatomical visualizations for education were created over a century ago. This is despite the incredible amount of ongoing research and the vast possibilities now available in visualization. Not just in terms of the visuals themselves, but also in how such visualizations are utilized in research and education.
So, in consultation with Joris Koene, I began my journey as an external PhD candidate. Over the past few months, I haven’t just been gathering scientific literature as one typically does at the start of a PhD; I have primarily been focusing on sharpening exactly what I want to achieve with this doctorate.
It is finally starting to take shape. I won’t explain it all in this blog post, but my goal is to share my thoughts on this site every week.
I have also created a permanent “Tools” page to show what I use for everything: ranging from Zotero for organizing scientific papers to ZBrush for creating my models.
