Kimberley is a molecular virologist at the Virology division of the Centre for Infectious Disease Research, Diagnostics and laboratory Screening (IDS), Centre for Infectious Disease Control (CiB) at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM). Currently she is heading the hepatitis B virus molecular surveillance and the enterovirus/parechovirus clinical surveillance programs. Dr Benschop is the lead coordinator for enterovirus/ parechovirus section of VIRO-TypeNed, which is a collaboration of laboratories working on epidemiological characterizations of viruses that enable efficient molecular surveillance, scientific expert at QCMD, a member of the management steering committee of the Enterovirus Non polio enterovirus Network (ENPEN), the host site supervisor for the ECDC European Public Health Microbiology Training path (EUPHEM) and the training coordinator for the IDS department. Her work focuses on combining molecular virology with epidemiology for surveillance purposes, exploring new avenues in culture and molecular techniques, surveillance, antivirals, and artificial intelligence. She believes that collaboration and training of the next generation of researchers is key to good science and a healthy population. She did her PhD-research on the pathogenesis and epidemiology of parechoviruses, where her work was key in establishing parechoviruses as a major cause of CNS related disease in neonates, and implementation of their diagnosis worldwide. Her PhD also led to the discovery of two new parechovirus types.
She is a (co)-author of more than 100 peer reviewed papers and reviews. H-index= 26.