Rutger Kok

Bioinformatician in the Rodriguez-Colman lab. I'm the original author of OrganoidTracker, a neural-network based program to track single cells in (intestinal) organoids. I do a lot of image analysis, but also analysis of omics data.

I originally studied chemistry in Utrecht, and followed courses from theoretical physics to biology. Later, I did a PhD at AMOLF (Amsterdam) on intestinal homeostasis, during which I developed that cell tracker, but also cultured and imaged a ton of organoids. We aimed at discovering the set of rules that intestinal epithelial cells used to maintain homeostasis.

In Rodriguez Colman's lab, we are more interested in tumors. We look at them from the perspective of metabolism. Tumor cells no longer follow a set of rules optimized for the organism's fitness, but only for their own fitness. This changes the game, and it's our goal to exploit any weaknesses that the tumor cells will inevitably develop.