Laura Seelen

Laura Seelen was born in 1986 in the south of the Netherlands and grew up at the foot of one of its hills, the Kunderberg in Welten. Laura ended up getting her degree in 2007 in Biology and Medical Laboratory research at the Zuyd University of Applied Sciences in Heerlen. During an internship in South Africa in 2006, exploring the various unique ecosystems above and below water made much more of an impact on her life than the laboratory work.
After experiencing the working life in the genetics lab of Maastricht University Medical Centre, she had the opportunity to continue her studies at the Radboud University in Nijmegen in 2008. There, she choose ecology as a major and became even more interested in life below water. One of the internships allowed for diving, macrofauna and quarry lakes. The perfect basis for which would later become her PhD thesis. Laura achieved her master's in Biology in 2011. After various jobs including teaching at Maastricht Science College, she started her PhD at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology in 2014. The project to research the ecological quality of quarry lakes in the Province of Noord- Brabant had close ties with regional water management and various stakeholders. Next to two summers of fieldwork exploring the depths of quarry lakes, she had the opportunity to work directly together with various stakeholders. In a European citizen science project (NETLAKE Citizen Science) Laura discovered her passion; combining aquatic ecology and working with people of various backgrounds and interests to explore and improve local water quality. Since September 2018, she works as a senior advisor in water quality management for the regional water authority Brabantse Delta in Breda, the Netherlands.
There she works on improving water quality together with citizens, scientists, farmers and recreationalists.