Suzanne Smit

Introduction

In 2002 Suzanne Smit obtained her MSc, after completing a Major in chemistry and a Minor in science education and communication at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. Her Major project was on online monitoring of polymerisation reactions in the group of Age Smilde. She is now a post docteral reseacher in the Biosystems Data Analysis group where she works on biomarker discovery in proteomics data, supervized by Age Smilde and Huub Hoefsloot.

Research: Proteomics and biomarker discovery

With modern techniques it is possible to take a look at many proteins in human tissue or blood at the same time. Since different diseases cause different protein concentrations in blood, measuring all these proteins could enable the early detection of many diseases. To do this, we need to know what the protein pattern for a disease is. We are especially interested in biomarkers: one protein or a combination of a few proteins which presence or absence is indicative for a certain disease. The typical size of a proteomics data set (few samples, many variables) brings some interesting challenges: