Vera started in the department of Nutrition and Preventive Medicine in March 2014. She worked on the ENRICH study and is currently involved in the Blueberry study. Before arriving at the UEA, she obtained a BSc in Nutrition and MSc in Food Safety from Wageningen University, the Netherlands. She proceeded to do her PhD at the same university on the health effects and risk assessment of soy isoflavones, which was awarded in June 2014. During her PhD she sucessfully ran two clinical trials on gene expression effects of isoflavones in PBMCs and adipose tissue. She is currently studying the effects of anthocyanins on cardiovascular health and insulin resistance in the Blueberry study, including the effects and quantification of anthocyanin metabolites.

Berends, L. M., van der Velpen, V., Cassidy, A.(2015)Flavan-3-ols, theobromine, and the effects of cocoa and chocolate on cardiometabolic risk factorsin Current Opinion in Lipidology26.pp. 10-19 Full Text UEA Repository(Article) van der Velpen, V., Geelen, A., Hollman, P. C., Schouten, E. G., van 't Veer, P., Afman, L. A.(2014)Isoflavone supplement composition and equol producer status affect gene expression in adipose tissue: a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled crossover trial in postmenopausal womenin American Journal of Clinical Nutrition100.pp. 1269-1277 Full Text UEA Repository(Article) van der Velpen, V., Hollman, P. C., van Nielen, M., Schouten, E. G., Mensink, M., Van't Veer, P., Geelen, A.(2014)Large inter-individual variation in isoflavone plasma concentration limits use of isoflavone intake data for risk assessmentin European Journal of Clinical Nutrition68.pp. 1141-7 Full Text UEA Repository(Article) van der Velpen, V., Geelen, A., Schouten, E. G., Hollman, P. C., Afman, L. A., van 't Veer, P., Leukocytes, Mononuclear, Receptors, Estrogen(2013)Estrogen receptor-mediated effects of isoflavone supplementation were not observed in whole-genome gene expression profiles of peripheral blood mononuclear cells in postmenopausal, equol-producing womenin Journal of Nutrition143.pp. 774-780 Full Text UEA Repository(Article)