Sten van Beek was born on August 18th 1995 in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. In 2013, he started his Bachelor Biomedical Sciences at Maastricht University with a special focus on obesity and the development of type 2 diabetes mellitus. After graduating his bachelor with distinction (cum laude) in 2016, he enrolled in the Master Biomedical Sciences at Maastricht University with a specialisation in Nutrition and Metabolism. He performed his senior internship at the Department of Molecular Biosciences at Stockholm University in Sweden under supervision of Prof. Dr. Tore Bengtsson and Dr. Joris Hoeks. During his internship, he focused on the effect of beta-2 adrenergic receptor stimulation on skeletal muscle glucose uptake in obese mice.
He graduated his master with distinction (cum laude) in June 2018. Based on his research at Stockholm, he won a grant within the Nutrim Graduate Program to finance his own PhD project to translate his findings into a human study. In September 2018, he started working on this project under supervision of Dr. Joris Hoeks.