Niek developed a passion for pediatrics and pediatric clinical research when working at the RSV Research Group at Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital during medical school training at the Utrecht University Medical Center, in the Netherlands. He obtained pediatric clinical and research experience abroad in high-income settings such as the lab of Tina Hartert at Vanderbilt Universyt, USA, and a low/middle income setting in Paramaribo, Suriname. He obtained a PhD from the University of Amsterdam with a thesis focusing on risk stratification for early-onset sepsis risk using the early-onset sepsis risk calculator under the supervision of Prof. Frans Plötz. He is currently combining pediatric residency and a post-doc position in pediatric infectious diseases at the group of Prof. Annemarie van Rossum at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, focusing on algorithms and prediction models to improve the use of antibiotics in newborns.