Dr. Laura Schaap is an epidemiologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Health Sciences at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her research focuses on healthy aging, with a particular interest in sex and gender differences, as well as the influence of physical and social environments. Dr. Schaap explores how well older adults fit within their environments, considering their individual wishes and needs. She also teaches the course "Geriatrics and Aging" to bachelor students in Health Sciences, where she highlights the importance and interconnectedness of all domains of aging—physical, cognitive, psychological, and social—in order to maintain or improve the well-being of older adults.

Career path and international collaboration

Laura's PhD research (2004-2010) focused on inflammation and sex hormone levels as determinants of sarcopenia: the age-related loss of muscle mass, strength and physical performance. During the PhD project, Laura spent six months as a research fellow at the National Institute on Aging (NIA), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD, USA.

During the final phase of her PhD project, Laura was co-applicant of a funded European study on causes and consequences of osteoarthritis across six European cohorts of older people (EPOSA). She supervised a PhD-project on the impact of the outdoor physical environment on older persons with osteoarthritis. As a post-doc researcher on this project, she was involved in the overall coordination of the study, oversight of the data collection and data management.

While working on the EPOSA project, Laura received a fellowship grant for talented junior researchers from the EMGO Institute for Health and Care Research (EMGO+) of the VUmc, to elaborate on her previous research on sarcopenia. She served as principal investigator and expert in several international projects to standardize the measurement of sarcopenia and implement this into clinical practice.

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