Renate van der Molen is working as an Medical Immunologist at the Department of Laboratory Medicine at the Radboud University Medical Center (Radboudumc) in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. She obtained her masters degree in Biology in 1992 at the Leiden University, The Netherlands. She completed her PhD at the Leiden University Medical Center on the immunoprotective effect of sunscreens in 2000. After working as a post-doc at the University of Edinburgh (UK) on the development of a vaccine against a sheep retroviral infection, she moved back to the Netherlands to start her own research group on immunopathogenesis of viral hepatitis in 2002 at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam. Because of her strong interest in Clinical Medicine she decided to change her career slightly and to become a Medical Immunologist. She performed her residency at the Reinier de Graaf Group in Delft and the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam. In 2009, she became Medical Immunologist and staff member at the Laboratory of Medical Immunology (LMI) of the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen. She is responsible for laboratory diagnostics of immunological disorders, in particular auto-immune diseases, immune-deficiencies and allergies. Next to her work as a Medical Immunologist she is teamleader of a successful research project into reproductive immunology. The interest and inspiration for reproductive immunology came from the department's main diagnostic task in transplantation diagnostics. Pregnancy and transplantation share the similarity, that in both a (partly) foreign organ/fetes has to be tolerated. Her research questions are all focused on obtaining more knowledge on which factors determine successful pregnancy and factors that can disturb it (such as use of immunomodulating medication and endometrial/vaginal microbiota) and factors that can contribute significantly to healthy life and healthy offspring. Renate’s work is (inter)nationally renowned and resulted in collaborations with amongst others Stanford, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Jena University. Furthermore, she (co-) founded the Reproductive Immunology Network (www.RINet.nl) and the Pregnancy After Renal Transplantation OUTcome (PARTOUT) working party, both including clinicians/scientists from all Dutch university medical centers. She is projectleader of several project investigating the immunopathogeneses of recurrent pregnancy loss and endometriose. The reason for joining the IVVN is her collaboration with the Maastricht University Medical Center (MUMC; two joint PhD students) on a Horizon2020 project (www.PREMSTEM.eu) investigating the use of mesenchymal stem cells in preterm-born babies and for which a innovative sheep model of preterm birth is used. For this sheep model we have developed a new high-dimensional flowcytometry panel to characterize the sheep immune system. She wrote and peer-reviewed many scientific articles (81 peer reviewed papers and google H-index 33) and her research group currently consists of 5 PhD students. She is a regular invited speaker at prestigious (inter)national conferences including the Society for Reproductive Investigation. Currently, she is associate editor for the section Alloimmunity and Transplantation at Frontiers of Immunology. Her main drive is to improve pregnancy outcome for mother and child as all life starts with healthy pregnancy this definitely deserves more attention.