Laura Suzanne Cuijpers was born on February 11th 1991 in Dordrecht, The Netherlands. In 2009, she graduated from the Johan de Wit gymnasium in Dordrecht. She moved to Groningen to study Human Movement Sciences, which resulted in a Bachelor’s degree in 2013, a Master’s degree (Cum Laude) in 2015 specialising in perception and action. In her MSc thesis, she examined crew coordination processes and the relation thereof with boat movements in rowing at the Faculty of Human Kinetics in Lisbon, Portugal.
Laura is fascinated by the ability of people to form (social) systems together, such as in rowing, dance and martial arts. This led to an interest in coordination dynamics, motor development and joint action. She was granted a fully-funded MSc-PhD trajectory at the University Medical Center Groningen, which allowed her to pursue that fascination. Het PhD-trajectory resulted in a series of papers in top 25% journals. In addition, during the PhD she had the chance to visit the Center of Ecological Studies in Perception and Action in Storrs, CT, US and partake in the APA Nonlinear dynamics summer course in Cincinnati, OH, US. She was awarded a place in the finale of the Science Slam World Cup 2018 in Koln, Germany.
