Pauline obtained her bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences from University College Utrecht, where she first got acquainted with developmental biology. She completed her Master’s degree in Clinical Embryology at the University of Oxford, where she studied the cellular dynamics of symmetry-breaking in the post-implantation mouse epiblast at the Srinivas Lab. Following this, she gained clinical experience as an embryologist at Weill Cornell Medicine - Center for Reproductive Medicine. In February 2025, Pauline started her PhD at MERLN in collaboration with the department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the GROW institute.

The aim of her project is to characterize the effects of aneuploidy on cellular dynamics in the human embryo. As aneuploidy is thought to be one of the major factors limiting successful human reproduction, understanding its role in early human development is crucial for improving success rates in the IVF clinic. Pauline will be using blastoids, a stem-cell derived model for early development, to investigate this phenomenon.