Prestigious KNAW Early-Career Award for Suzanne Fustolo-Gunnink
News
Sanquin researcher Suzanne Fustolo-Gunnink has been awarded an Early-Career award by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). She is conducting research on transfusions in premature babies. These often suffer from anemia or platelet deficiency. To investigate when doctors decide to give a transfusion, Suzanne has set up a European network, which has since resulted in an international guideline being established for red blood cell transfusions. The Early-Career Award is given to talented researchers who are able to develop innovative and original research ideas.
In addition to her work at Sanquin, Suzanne is a fellow at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), where she works with scientists from various disciplines to take her research to the next level. She is pioneering in the field of complexity thinking, and wants to use her research to advance further medical science in the future.
Complex issues
Premature infants can have several, diverse problems. They are ventilated, have infections, or their intestines do not work properly. And the still immature bone marrow does not always make enough blood cells. In short, a complex situation. Often these children need transfusions. Suzanne charts when doctors do so and is committed to creating international guidelines. But do guidelines, based on obtained research data, suffice? It's a question Suzanne puts to her colleagues at IAS, where she works with philosophers, among others.
Customized
Suzanne uses her research on premature babies to explore the extent to which guidelines can also be drawn up more broadly, giving practitioners more room to provide customization. “Often guidelines are based on outcomes that carry a certain degree of uncertainty,” Suzanne explains. “But guidelines are often very directive, and in the clinic they are often followed one-on-one, because that gives practitioners a foothold. I want to investigate whether we can deal differently with the complexity of patients and the uncertainty of the outcome of treatments.”
To do so, she uses methods from what is known as complexity thinking. “The reality in which doctors make decisions is often a lot more complicated than what you can capture with data. Are there methods by which we can better describe that complexity, and how do we deal with everything we don't yet understand?” Broader guidelines in healthcare give doctors more decision space, more opportunities to provide personalized care, but also to sometimes not initiate a treatment. In November 2024, Suzanne will host an expert meeting to discuss this topic with experts from different disciplines and sectors.
Deserved prize
The KNAW prize is more than deserved, according to Gerald de Haan, Sanquin's Research Director. “Suzanne is able to inspire and connect, gets different medical and non-medical disciplines around the table, and has the courage to take uncharted paths.”
Suzanne is very happy with the space Sanquin is giving her to do her fellowship at IAS, and wants to emphasize that in all her projects she collaborates with an awful lot of people, both inside and outside Sanquin, and also gets a lot of opportunities “I get an individual prize for that now, but actually it's kind of for everyone.”
The prize consists of a work of art and a cash sum of €15,000, which the recipient may use for the benefit of their own research career.