14781-koppen

379 Appendices ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ilan Jasper Nader Koppen was born in Amsterdam (the Netherlands) on May 25 th 1988, only a few months before Marc Benninga, his future promotor, would win a bronze medal in field hockey during the Olympics in Seoul. He spent his childhood in Amsterdam, where he successfully finished potty training at three years of age. Around the same time his other future promotor (Carlo Di Lorenzo) finished the Los Angeles marathon. After completing secondary school at the Barlaeus Gymnasium in 2006, he enrolled to study medicine at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. During his study, he became fascinated by the field of pediatrics. Ilan did his senior internship at the Department of Pediatrics at Onze Lieve Vrouw Gasthuis (currently OLVG Oost). In addition, he arranged a short rotation at the Department of Pediatric Surgery at Emma Children’s Hospital/Academic Medical Center, where he was first confronted with children suffering from severe functional constipation requiring surgery. Following his graduation in 2013, he started his clinical career working as a resident physician at the Department of Pediatrics at Sint Lucas Andreas Ziekenhuis in Amsterdam (currently OLVG West). After this, he was determined to find a PhD project specifically focused at childhood constipation and came in contact with prof. dr. Marc Benninga, who offered him the project he was looking for. Under supervision of his promotors, prof. dr. Marc Benninga and prof. dr. Carlo Di Lorenzo, Ilan worked on his PhD project at Emma Children’s Hospital/Academic Medical Center (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) and at Nationwide Children’s Hospital (Columbus, Ohio, USA). His studies focused on functional defecation disorders in children and during his PhD period he developed a special interest in motility disorders of the gut. In the Netherlands, Ilan also worked at the outpatient clinics of Emma Children’s Hospital/Academic Medical Center and De Kinderkliniek (Almere), providing clinical care for children with defecation disorders. In January 2018, Ilan started his training in pediatrics at Spaarne Gasthuis in Hoofddorp. In 2019, he will return to Emma Children’s Hospital/Academic Medical Center to continue on his journey to become a pediatrician. Ilan lives in Amsterdam and hopes to own a dog someday.