AJCF (Auke) Verkaar MSc

Auke Verkaar obtained her Bachelor Nutrition and Health from Wageningen University in 2014. In November 2020 she obtained her Master degree in Nutrition and Health where she specialized in Epidemiology and Public Health. In January 2021 she started working as a research assistant at the Division Nutrition and Health in the chair group Nutrition and Disease. She mainly focused on writing a review about the association between body size in early life (e.g. from intra-uterine life until young adulthood) and the risk of colorectal cancer later in life.

Auke is currently doing her PhD in the chair group Nutrition and Disease. Her research focusses on the relationship between diet and sleep. Auke wrote her own research proposal for this project which was granted by the Graduate Programme of the VLAG graduate school. In her research she combines epidemiology with intervention studies. She uses data from existing cohort studies and she will examine the effect of several lifestyle interventions on sleep outcomes in various patient populations. Therefore, she will use data of the SoFiT study (in survivors with colorectal cancer that struggle with cancer related fatigue) and the Voed je Beter study (in patients with cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes).