Karin Roelofs

Karin Roelofs is Professor of Experimental Psychopathology at the Behavioural Science Institute (BSI) and Principal Investigator at the Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging and Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University Nijmegen. She chairs the PI-group "Affective Neuroscience" and holds the chair in Experimental Psychopathology.

Her research focuses on psychological and neuroendocrine mechanisms underlying social-motivational behavior in both healthy individuals and patients with stress-related and social-motivational disorders such as social anxiety and aggression. She employs various brain imaging techniques (fMRI, MEG) combined with neural stimulation (TUS, tACS) or pharmacological interventions during emotion control and decision making tasks. Her work investigates how stress influences the neural development of emotion control through longitudinal studies including the Nijmegen Longitudinal Study (NLS), BIBO, and the Police In-Action (PIA) cohort.

Her key research questions address how people regulate emotional actions, whether emotion control can be improved by influencing brain activity or through real-time biofeedback, and whether psychopathology can be predicted based on acute stress reactions and recovery patterns. Her publications span high-impact journals including Nature Communications, Nature Human Behaviour, and Nature Reviews Neuroscience, demonstrating her leadership in understanding the neural basis of emotion regulation and stress responses.

• ERC Advanced Grant (2025)
• ERC Consolidator Grant (2017)
• ERC Starting Grant (2012)
• NWO VICI, VIDI, and VENI grants
• Elected Member of Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Elected Member of Academia Europaea

Professor Roelofs has secured numerous significant grants including the HEART2ADAPT project (2019-2025, ERC-AdG), PIA: Police In-action longitudinal study (2015-2021), and DYNAMORE: Dynamic modelling of resilience (2017-2025). She serves on multiple boards including ALLEA (All European Academies), the Selection committee for the ERC Advanced Grant, and as Board Member of INTRESA (International Resilience Research Alliance). She is also a registered GZ psychologist (BIG) and cognitive behavioral therapist (VCGT), bridging clinical practice with cutting-edge neuroscience research.