What do you like most about your job?

I like the intellectual challenge and the chance to contribute to public policies.

Which research from the past year are you most proud of?

My thesis is about the mechanism that assigns students to positions for general practitioner training in Dutch universities. The mechanism involved a sequential version of a Random Serial Dictatorship (RSD) in which students can participate a maximum of 2 times. RSD refers to a procedure for fair random assignment. In this case it was a spot for training at a university. Students submitted a rank-ordered list of their preferences, but now they had the opportunity to express the intensity of their preferences. They could do this by being more selective and submitting a shorter list of preferences in their first attempt.
Our theoretical findings indicate that allowing students to express the intensity of their preferences by being selective on their first shot can increase the students’ welfare when positions are assigned using RSD. I am proud of completing the structural model for estimating students’ preferences. This will allow us to empirically assess the potential increase in the students’ welfare.

What do colleagues probably not know about you?

I tap dance, although I am not currently active. It’s a dance style, but also a form of percussion. Part of what attracts me to it are the musical patterns and sequences, which are also something I appreciate in math.