Dr. Marit Westerterp is Associate Professor at the University Medical Center Groningen. She obtained her PhD from Leiden University and performed postdoctoral research at Columbia University in New York in the group of Professor Tall. Her research is focused on the crosstalk between cholesterol transport and inflammation in atherosclerosis. She found that cholesterol efflux pathways suppress inflammation in animal models and humans with anti-atherogenic effects, and, more recently, that during atherosclerosis, cholesterol efflux pathways maintain T cell functionality by suppressing T cell apoptosis. She serves on the editorial boards of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, as well as Circulation Research.