Dr. Edith Houben graduated in Biology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 1999, with a specialization in Molecular and Cellular Biology. She subsequently performed her PhD research on membrane protein biogenesis in the model organism Escherichia coli at Molecular Microbiology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. After her PhD project, she worked for one year as a postdoctoral research fellow in the same group on signal sequence mediated protein secretion in Bacillus subtilis.
In 2004, Edith Houben moved to Switzerland to enter the tuberculosis research field as a postdoctoral fellow in the group of prof. Jean Pieters, Biozentrum, University of Basel. This work was funded by a long-term Febs fellowship.
In 2007, she obtained a Veni-grant from NWO-ALW and moved to the VU University medical center in Amsterdam to start her study on the inner workings of type VII secretion systems in pathogenic mycobacteria.
In 2013, Edith Houben subsequently obtained a VIDI-grant from NWO-ALW on the molecular and biochemical analysis of mycobacterial transport systems and was appointed Assistant Professor at Molecular Microbiology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
As awardee of an ASPASIA grant from NWO she has been promoted to Associate Professor in 2018.
