Dr. Saal van Zwanenbergstichting p/a N.V. Organon dhr. dr. W.N.G.M.

de Laat, secretaris Postbus 20 5340 BH OSS

Amsterdam, July 21, 2008

To Whom It May Concern,

For the past couple of months, we have had the pleasure of supervising Nawal Bahia el Idrissi during her internship at the department of Oral Microbiology at the Academic Centre for Dentistry Amsterdam (ACTA). During this internship, Nawal has distinguished herself by her excellent practical skills and her great insight and interest into her work.

Nawal has proven to be an intelligent and hard-working student with good laboratory skills. She has been working on a project on Host-Parasite Interactions in Oral Infectious Diseases, more specifically, on a human fibroblast-infection model, in which the immunological interactions between primary human oral fibroblasts and the anaerobic oral pathogen Porphyromonas gingivalis have been studied. In this project she aimed to study the role of the capsular polysaccharide of P. gingivalis in its interaction with primary human oral fibroblasts. She performs her experiments with good planning and great care and she is skilled in both human cell culture techniques as well as microbiological methods. So far she has recovered some excellent and solid results that will most certainly result in publication. Also, Nawal has given good input of her own on how to proceed with experiments within her project, indicating her capability to perform research on her own.

At the personal level Nawal has been a very pleasant person to work with. She is a very interactive and kind girl who has shown a great motivation for her work. Nawal has put in

many efforts to perform her experiments the best way possible. Also she was not easily discouraged by less successful results.

Overall, Nawal definitely belongs to the top of the students we have supervised at our department. Therefore, we highly recommend her as an exchange student and as a candidate for your scholarship, Dr. Saal van Zwanenbergstichting. We are happy to provide you with any additional information.

Yours Sincerely,

Prof. Dr. Arie Jan van Winkelhoff

Nina Scheres, MSc

Jorg Brunner, MSc.

Dept. Periodontology, Section Oral Microbiology and Oral Cell Biology Academic Centre for Dentistry Amsterdam (ACTA) Van der Boechorststraat 7 1081 BT Amsterdam E-mail: n.scheres@vumc.nl