Nienke Wagenaar

Dr. Nienke Wagenaar is a post-doctoral research fellow at the department of Neonatology in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Dr. Wagenaar did her MD at Utrecht University (graduaded 2015) and started her PhD on neonatal stroke under supervision of prof. Linda de Vries and prof. Manon Benders in 2015. She defended her thesis in September 2019 entitled 'Advances in neonatal stroke - from early prediction to future therapies', after which she worked for almost 2 years as a resident in Pediatrics, before going back to research. Her research focuses on optimizing early prediction of neurodevelopmental outcome after neonatal stroke with use of neuroimaging, neuromonitoring and clinical parameters, as well as developing new treatment strategies for improving outcomes after neonatal stroke.  She was involved in the PASSIoN trial, a clinical study investigating the use of mesenchymal stem cells in newborns with neonatal stroke. Currently, her post-doc is a combined fellowship of the UMC Utrecht and the Pediatric Stroke team in the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada. Nienke aims to work a clinician-scientist in the field of Pediatric Neurology in the future.