[2] For her post-graduate education, she spent a year-long internship at the University of Pittsburgh from 1997 to 1998, where she first developed a fascination with research on the brain after witnessing the first neuroimaging studies including young children were performed.

In 2003, she graduated cum laude in the same field and from the same university with her doctorate thesis,[1] Performance monitoring and decision-making: Psychophysiological and developmental analyses.

[4] She then spent two years working as a post doctoral associate at the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis.

[8] In The Netherlands, her work has led to policy changes: a modification of the Youth Detention Act extended the age limits for juvenile prisons from 18 to 23.

[5] In interviews, she stated that she would use the prize money to continue her research on risk taking in the adolescent brain and to connect investigations on identity, altruism, and social media usage in young adults.

[11] She initiated the GUTS (Growing Up Together in Society) research program, funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science with 22 million euros.

The Netherlands' National Network for Women in Science has given her one of their top achievement awards, and she has published over 150 well-cited articles in scientific journals.

With some colleagues from Leiden University, she founded an organization, Athena's Angels, which aims to make visible and then correct the problems experienced by women who work in science.