Merlijn is interested in integrating theoretical and experimental approaches to understand biological complexity, particularly in the context of organismal development. He received his Master’s degrees in Mathematics and Biology from Utrecht University. During his Master’s, Merlijn worked on a variety of topics, ranging from single-cell genomics to random geometric graphs. As a visiting student at Princeton, he built a computational model to explore how multicellular life cycles arise in the context of a unicellular ancestor.