our people

Sebastiaan Bol, PhD
Founder

Sebastiaan earned his Master's degree in Medical Biotechnology (cum laude) at Wageningen University and his PhD in virology at the University of Amsterdam. He was born and raised in the Netherlands, but is living in the USA since 2011. Prior to moving to the Texas Hill Country in 2016, he lived in beautiful southern California where he did postdoctoral research at the University of California Riverside. Since 2023 Sebastiaan is an Assistant Professor in the Bunnik lab at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. Here, together with his wife Evelien Bunnik, he studies the development of naturally acquired protection to malaria and basic Plasmodium parasite biology using human tissues and in vitro cell cultures. He has published 23 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals (nine as first author) and peer-reviewed 6 manuscripts. Sebastiaan cares greatly about doing good science (including publishing). He is passionate about animal welfare and believes all vertebrae animals are sentient, empathic beings who should be treated as such.

Evelien Bunnik, PhD
Co-founder

Evelien earned her Master's in Biomedical Sciences (cum laude) at the oldest university in the Netherlands, located in the city of Leiden, where she was born and raised. She earned her PhD in virology (cum laude), studying neutralizing antibody responses in HIV patients, at the University of Amsterdam in 2010. After 5 years of postdoctoral research at the University of California Riverside, she started her own research lab when she was recruited by the Department of Microbiology & Immunology of UT Health San Antonio. Since 2023 she is a tenured Associate Professor. In her lab she studies how antibody and B cell responses protect against malaria in people with life-long parasite exposure, and, on the flip side, how such chronic immune activation affects the immune system. She has published more than 60 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals, including Nature Medicine, Nature Communications and Genome Research. When at home, she loves cuddling the cats, and playing Stray on the PS5 or playing Moss on the PS VR2.