Minh is a currently 1st year PhD student who is originally from Vietnam. He came to the Netherlands to pursue a bachelor of Pharmacy at the University of Groningen (RUG) in 2019. His interest in neuroscience developed through the bachelor thesis under the Molecular Pharmacology department (RUG) which focuses on the neurotoxicity mechanism of Amyloid-beta in SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells. After his bachelor, he continued to pursue a master of Medical Pharmaceutical Sciences (summa Cum Laude) in the same department which focuses on the metabolic dysfunction and calcium dysregulation of Alzheimer’s disease, using patients-derived iPSC to generate cortical brain organoids and microglial-like cells.

His PhD project at AST is headed by Prof. Dr. Kerensa Broersen which focuses on the development and characterization of gut-brain axis on a chip for physiology modeling to understand the prominent signaling pathways that drive the organ-organ crosstalk. At the same time, he aims to further understand the neuroimmune landscape in the gut-brain axis by utilizing both 2D and 3D models.