Renée Renata Cornelia Elisabeth Schreurs was born in Brunssum, the Netherlands, on April 18 in 1989. In 2007 she graduated from Bisschoppelijk College Broekhin (Roermond) with a VWO and International Baccalaureate English degree. In the same year, she moved to Amsterdam to study Psychobiology (BSc.) at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). One year later, she also enrolled in Psychology (BSc.). She graduated from Psychobiology in 2010 and from Psychology in 2011. After completing both bachelor’s degrees, Renée was accepted into the Research Master Brain & Cognitive Science at the UvA from which she graduated Cum Laude in 2013. During her master’s degree, Renée conducted two research internships. First, she studied non-viral protein-only nanoparticles as an alternative to viral-mediated gene therapy under the supervision of dr. Carlos Fitzsimons at the Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences. She then completed her final research internship on the regenerative potential of class III semaphorins in spinal cord injury at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience under the supervision of dr. Joost Verhaagen. Enchanted by the cross-talk between the nervous and immune systems, Renée pursued a PhD in immunology at the Emma Children’s Hospital and Experimental Immunology department at the Amsterdam University Medical Center (UMC). Under the supervision of prof. dr. Hans van Goudoever and dr. Madeleine Bunders, she studied T cells in the developing human intestine. She aims to graduate from her PhD in early 2020. Currently, Renée has joined the Autophagy-directed Immunity group at the Experimental Immunology department at the Amsterdam UMC as a postdoc. Here, under the supervision of dr. Carla Ribeiro, she studies autophagy-driven T-cell immunity at barrier surfaces in the context of antiviral immunity and inflammation.