Karin Roelofs is Professor of Experimental Psychopathology at the Behavioural Science Institute (BSI) and chair of the Affective Neuroscience group at the Donders Institute for Brain Cognition and Behaviour (DI), Radboud University Nijmegen (RU).
After obtaining her Masters’ Degrees in Neuropsychology and in Clinical psychology, she graduated Cum Laude at the RU (2002). Part of her studies she spent as a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH: Washington DC, USA). From 2001-2011 she worked as assistant and associate professor, respectively, at Leiden University (Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition: LIBC). Thereafter she moved to the Radboud University where she started the EPAN group “Experimental Psychopathology and Affective Neuroscience” at the BSI and the Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging (DCCN).
Her true passion is to study psychological and neuroendocrine mechanisms underlying stress-vulnerability and resilience in health and psychopathology. With a clear focus on neurocognitive mechanisms of defensive stress-responses, she uses various brain imaging (fMRI, MEG) techniques, combined with neural stimulation (TMS, cTBS, tACS) or pharmacological interventions (steroid hormones) during emotional control and decision making tasks. Next, to test their role in resilience, she applies the neurocognitively grounded paradigms in longitudinal samples, including a developmental sample from the Nijmegen Longitudinal Study (NLS) a large police cohort from the Police-In-Action (PIA) study and patients with affective disorders from the ERC-DARE2APPROACH study.
Karin Roelofs is member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Academia Europaea (AE). As vice-president of the Association for ERC Grantees (AERG) she is committed to fundamental science in Europe. She is also president-elect of the International Resilience Alliance (INTRESA).
Karin Roelofs received several European [ERC-starting (2012: NEURODEFENSE), ERC-consolidator (2017: DARE2APPROACH), collaborative Fp7 (2013: AGGRESSOTYPE) and Horizon2020 (2017: DYNAMORE) grants] and National [NWO: VENI, VIDI, ASPASIA, VICI and CROSSOVER] grants for her research. Furthermore, she is a BIG-registered GZ-psychologist.
See http://www.roelofs-epan.nl for publications, research statement and information about the EPAN group.