Ires Ghielen

205 About the author About the author Ires Ghielen was born on October 29, 1990 in Helden. She grew up with a younger brother and both her parents in the village of Beringe. At the end of her athenaeum studies at high schools Bouwens van der Boijecollege in Panningen and the VAVO in Venlo, her grandfather got diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease (PD). When she gained some knowledge about the disease, and saw how the disease impacts the lives of her grandfather and her family as a whole, she decided to become a researcher and help PD patients. Therefore, in 2010, she moved to Amsterdam to study Psychobiology at the University of Amsterdam. After a research-internship in which she came into contact with a lot of PD patients, Ires’ ambition for combining research with clinical work grew. After obtaining her Bachelor’s degree, she transferred to a Research Master in Clinical Neuropsychology and she took a clinical internship at the Medical Psychology department of Amsterdam UMC, location VUmc. She obtained her Master’s degree in 2017. Ires’ first employment was in 2014 at the University of Amsterdam, where she was a teaching assistant in statistics for first-year students. Within the same year, she started working as a research assistant at the department of Anatomy and Neuroscience within the Amsterdam UMC, location VUmc. For more than one year, she coordinated the Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) named BEWARE under the guidance of prof. dr. Odile A. van den Heuvel and dr. Erwin E.H. van Wegen, which became an important part of this thesis. The BEWARE project investigates a multidisciplinary group treatment combining physical therapy with psychotherapy in order to learn PD patients to better cope with their fluctuating motor and anxiety symptoms. In 2017, Ires got the opportunity to start a PhD position on this very same project and set up an improved and more extensive RCT, collaborating with two other centers to further investigate the BEWARE treatment. This project was supervised by promotor prof. dr. Odile A. van den Heuvel, promotor dr. Erwin E.H. van Wegen, and copromotor dr. Sonja Rutten. Together with her promoters, Ires received a grant from the Hersenstichting to financially support this research project. Besides her PhD position, Ires also started a post-master education for health care (GZ-)psychologist at RINO Amsterdam and GGZ ingeest in 2017. She specifically gained practical experience in diagnosing and treating patients with psychosomatic and anxiety disorders. In 2020, Ires started her online business: Hulp bij Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek. She helps health care professionals in doing their scientific research. After finishing her PhD, Ires will continue her work as a researcher within her online business. Still within her ambition to combine research with clinical practice, she will also continue her work with patients as a health care (GZ-)psychologist within the field of Neuropsychology. Ires currently lives in Wormerveer with her partner Jean Paul.