Scientist and Science Journalist

Known to most people as Jaap, I was born Jacobus Cornelis de Roode in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 1977.

Having finished school in 1995 I obtained an MSc in population biology (2000) at Wageningen University. During my degree I completed three research projects as well as a journalistic internship at the Dutch magazine Intermediair. My research involved fungal genetics in Rolf Hoekstra's lab at Wageningen University, evolutionary parasitology in Andrew Read's lab at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland) and field work on dung beetles with Menno Schilthuizen at Universiti Malaysia Sabah (Borneo).

Between finishing my MSc degree and starting my PhD degree I spent one year (200-2001) as a fulltime science journalist.

I then crossed the North Sea and spent three years in Andrew Read's lab at the University of Edinburgh to complete a PhD on the evolutionary biology of malaria parasites (2005). After this, I stayed in Andrew's lab as a postdoctoral researcher for another three months, before crossing a slightly bigger sea to study butterfly parasites with Sonia Altizer at Emory University in Atlanta and the University of Georgia in Athens.