Career Development Lessons In Big Science Projects
In this interview, we hear an inspiring story of career development with Anke-Hilse Maitland van der Zee, a professor of precision medicine in rush disease at the Amsterdam University Medical Center. Anke-Hilse looks back on focusing more on the research side of the medical industry, where she found freedom and the opportunity to deliver lasting impact. We touch base on the importance of having grit, persistence, and a desire to accomplish something meaningful as she shares about their public-private partnership P402. Anke-Hilse also discusses lessons on growing an effective research team and what it is like to have children in the middle of a high-powered career.
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Career Development Lessons In Big Science Projects
An Interview With Anke-Hilse Maitland van der Zee
In this episode, we have Anke-Hilse Maitland-van der Zee, who is a Professor of Precision Medicine in Respiratory Disease at the Amsterdam University Medical Center. I've had the honor and the pleasure of working quite a bit with her because she is someone who wants to accomplish something big in terms of the projects she engages in and has a belief in the idea that everyone should try to work together. Her type of leadership is one about bringing groups together.
Her position highlights that in that she's built up a group of more than 40 different researchers, postdocs, PhDs, and assistant professors at the University Medical Center in Amsterdam. During this interview, we go through a lot of different topics, but what you'll gain insights upon is what it's like to have a career trajectory and where to have this big goal focus, but also what it's like to become a mother in the midst of all of this career development. Also, how to have grit, in other words, persistence. Sit back and enjoy. I am certain you'll find this inspirational and insightful.
---Anke-Hilse, thank you for coming to the show. How are you doing?
I'm fine, thank you.
I always like to start off by talking about something about your environment. Especially with COVID and everything, we've all locked away behind in our own rooms. We missed some of that interaction. What I see on the back of the shelf behind you is a very interesting picture. Is there a story behind that?
It was a gift from one of my PhD students that graduated, someone who's very interested in data mining and who had a complicated story. I'm not going to try and tell it, but it has something to do with randomly generating data and then leading into beautiful pictures. That's the beautiful picture that you see.
It looks like a fractal pattern. It's a very thoughtful gift from the student. Before we go much further, what's he doing now?
This was a very special student because he studied Economics. Most of my students are coming out of Medical or Pharmaceutical Sciences. He was very interested in data mining and pharmacy practice data, looking at drug prescription data to see how patents are and new drugs that enter the market, which patients switch to these drugs, and things like that. Next to that, he started a company, eXcelleRes. It’s something that was a spinoff of the department where I'm working now. He's a director of a company. It’s a completely different thing. Next to that, he did finalize his PhD. I was very proud of that. It's very nice to get these personalized gifts after people graduate.
We can touch base a bit later about what excites you and what's going on and come back to this whole thing about mentoring students. That's a student that went on to be a leader of a company, which is very interesting. I wanted to start off, maybe it's back in the early days, maybe it's not in the early days, but what is the most difficult period of your career?
I have to be honest. I've been very lucky in my career. There were not extremely difficult periods. I studied Pharmaceutical Sciences. At the end of that period, I decided that becoming a pharmacist was not something that was in my league. I was very interested in research. I got a position to do my PhD. It was a very nice and interesting period. I learned a lot by the end of that. I still liked research. I decided to go for a postdoctoral position. I went to the United States, to Houston, Texas for two years as a postdoc. That was also a nice period and a completely different group. It’s nice to be in a foreign situation and learn to live as a foreigner.
You've experienced that yourself, but even if you mastered the language quite okay if you understand what people are telling you, still, there are many different things, habits that people have, or working ethics and things like that. I enjoyed being there for two years. I went back to a university where I was working as a PhD student. I stayed there for quite a long time. I was an assistant professor and an associate professor.
If you refer to the hardest period, I always thought that I would stay there because I liked it there. I had great colleagues. I loved doing work. It was a pharmaceutical sciences department. That suited what I had studied. Everyone always said, “You're going to be a professor one day. we believe in you. We think that you can do that.” The chair that I had always envied would be mine one day, and they decided to no longer go for that. They thought precision medicine was not something that their department should be aiming for.
I was disappointed that happened, but that also meant that I had to start thinking about my future because I'd always thought that automatically one day, I would move into that, and then that was gone. I was lucky because while I was thinking, Peter Sterk called me. I was collaborating with him on several projects. I met him at conferences. I knew him quite well. He said, “I'm going to retire. You would be my perfect successor.” I was surprised.
He was a professor in the Respiratory Department. I was working in Pharmaceutical Sciences. I was a pharmacist. I said, “Me at a clinical department?” He said, “Don't you want to come and talk?” I said, “I always like talking, no problem.” At that moment, Elisabeth Bel, who was head of that department at the moment invited me for a conversation and the rest is history. Six months later, I moved from Italy to Amsterdam and started working in the new department.
That period of thinking didn't take very long. Looking back, it's been a great career step. It made me start in a new environment after working at a place where I started as a PhD student. Starting at a place where you come in as a full professor is a different thing. People look at you in a different way, doors open more easily. I learned many new things. That was a good step.
I want to go back to the point where you were studying Pharmaceuticals to be a pharmacist. What made you say, “This isn't for me.” What do you think is different between what you would've been doing and what you ended up doing?
When I had to choose what I was going to do in college, I was eighteen years old and I found it hard. I see that in my kids now who have this age. What are you going to do for the rest of your life? Everything is unclear what is going to be. I knew one thing. I worked very hard to get all my Science CPX like Math, Chemistry, and Physics. I thought they were interesting. I didn't want to study pure Chemistry or Physics, but I wanted to do something with these subjects. I'm very much of an alpha. I was good at Languages as well. I thought medicine was extremely interesting, but I didn't see myself as a physician.
Blood and operations at that time were far away from me. It was my father who suggested to start doing Pharmaceutical Sciences because I would need these science objects. I would also learn about the human body and how it worked, and I did not have to become a doctor. I thought that was a fine idea. I didn't know what else to do. I started doing it. While doing it, I learned more about being a pharmacist because I'd never thought about that. What a pharmacist would do was not in my world. During my study, I figured out that working in quite a small environment with the pharmacist right there. There are 2 pharmacists and maybe 10 assistants working, but that's the whole thing.
It's not bigger than that. I felt like I wanted to work in some environment where I would work with more people. I did my internships. I went through the whole Pharmacy Education. I'm officially a pharmacist. Doing the internships, it was clear to me that was not my world. If you wanted to do something new in the pharmacy, like giving more information to patients or whatever project you would like to do, you would have to convince the assistant to start doing this. Every time you wanted to do something, try to get ten people to believe what you were doing. It would also not be possible to grow anymore. This would be your place, and that would be it for the rest of your career.
That was not very attractive to me. In the meantime, I loved doing research. I loved my final research project and I was enthusiastic about that. It made complete sense to start a PhD. The moment I started my PhD, I didn't know that my career was going to be in research forever. I was interested in pharmaceutical companies. I decided at that moment to stay in it forever, but I liked it and I seemed to be quite good at it. It worked. After my PhD, my husband and I were excited about going abroad. He's a chemical engineer. Houston was quite a good place for him to find a job.
There's a large medical center. I had a great postdoc with Eric Boerwinkle, the professor at the Human Genetics Center. That was all nice. When I got back to the Netherlands, I had to choose again, “What am I going to do? Am I maybe going to make the step towards a more industry-like position or am I going back into research?” My old boss had always said, “If you come back from Houston, we are very happy to take you back.” That was an easy step. I could go back.
I did that, but then I had to do a lot of teaching because I had to get my own research money. They could give me a teaching position, but to be able to do research, I had to get in the money. I said to myself, “I take a year. If within a year I don't have money to do research, I'll find another job because I don't want to be teaching for the rest of my life. Within one year, I got a Veni grant, a Dutch system for excellent research. I got my grant and that's why I stayed.
I know Peter very well. I worked with him very closely on the environment project. I trust his judgment enormously. What do you think he saw in you that made you a random call to ask you to come to be a chair? Did he like your research or did he see something else?
You should ask him. What someone else said to me later was that Peter did something that a lot of professors that retire don't do, and that think about the future of their department and their people. What Peter probably liked about me is that I like taking care of my people and being in the lead of a group. He showed me at a lot of conferences and at a meeting looking back before it started. I think he liked me as a person and what I could do. I find it hard, but he was very clear about the thought that I would take good care of his group.
It's very insightful from his standpoint to not necessarily be somebody that has good research but to say, “Who's going to take care of the group? Who's going to be the leader of the group to make sure that they all do well?” That's impressive in that way and from what I know, you're doing that. It's clear. I also want to touch base on you said what inspired you or what was different about working in a pharmacy was that you wouldn't have the potential to do something new. Would you say it's more of the creativity that was the value of going into research?
Yes. I like doing new things. That’s also why teaching is sometimes hard for me, doing the same subject for new students every year. Sometimes I started to get a bit bored. That never happens in research. You're always busy taking new steps and thinking about new opportunities. That belongs to me. I like to do new things all the time. Starting this big public-private partnership was something completely new. It’s completely different from writing a grant for that strong foundation. I try to find new challenges every time because that keeps work fun. That's very possible in research.
Career Development: Teaching is hard since you have to do the same subject for new students every year. That never happens in research, where you are always busy taking new steps and thinking about new opportunities.
Another thing I like about the job in research is the freedom. I have the freedom to make my own job, to hire the people that I like, work on the subjects that I like, at least to a certain extent, and choose how we're going to do it with whom we collaborate. In the beginning, I liked how I was the boss of my own time. Every now and then, I feel like I've lost that a little bit because my agenda's now full that it's hard to be the boss of your own time anymore. In the end, I’m still determined whether I will want to read all afternoon, talk to a lot of people, or travel somewhere or not. That's different from working in an industry or in a pharmacy. The freedom we have as researchers is much bigger.
You touched upon a very interesting point there, this freedom and the opportunity to do something new. That leads to a full agenda. How do you prioritize what you should be doing every day, hour, and minute? Do you have a system?
I might need a system, but things have grown in the past couple of years. I started in Amsterdam. From that time, Peter left a couple of people in the group, but I built a group of more than 40 people. I'm running many projects at the same time. I'm writing many grants. I'm on several boards of societies. I'm organizing a large conference. There are many tasks, and now it's getting harder to plan every minute because a lot of minutes are already planned. I'm a person who likes a lot of things and who finds it hard to say no not because I can’t say no, but because I always see opportunities and I like what I do.
I'm also lucky that I'm quite able to handle a lot of things at the same time because if I couldn't, then I would've had a problem a long time ago. I am able to handle a lot of things. As long as I'm happy and I like it, it's okay, but I do know that my agenda now reaches the end of its flexibility. Somehow, maybe someday I will have to say no to something, which is hard for me, honestly.
If you look at some of the productivity to say no to a lot of things and you're saying say yes to opportunities and be comfortable with the fact that there's a lot going on. You have to push forward, which clearly has been successful because you mentioned P4O2. Maybe you can give an explanation of what P4O2 is. Not everybody in the audience knows what that is.
P4O2 stands for Precision Medicine for More Oxygen. It's a large public-private partnership. I say large and I will tell you the size. We have 21 private partners and 7 academic partners. We have a consortium of 28 partners. The budget for 4 years of research is around €14.5 million. I find it large. There are much larger projects around. The project that I've been running is a very large one. It started with an initiative from Peter Sterk, the professor whom I am lucky enough to be a successor, and Dirkje Postma, a well-known professor in respiratory research in the Netherlands.
They together had decided that it would be important for the Netherlands to have more collaboration among researchers in respiratory medicine. Also, to involve patients and figure out what are the gaps in this research for this coming decade and how we can make sure that we get in more money into our research. They brought together researchers, physicians, but also, paramedics, patients, and private partners to talk together about, “What are we good at in the Netherlands? What should we do in the coming years? What are the gaps?”
Out of this whole project, it was 2 times, 2 days or something, there came ten subjects that everyone together decided, “We should work on in the Netherlands.” Out of these 10 subjects, there were 3 projects. One was on Fatigue. This project is also funded and run by Annemie Schols, and then a project on very early prevention of respiratory disease. It was called HALO, but until now, unfortunately, no funding was found for that project then. The third project was P4O2.
The board of the NRS of whom I was a chair at that moment was supportive of these projects coming out of the Netherlands lung research, as they called it, the NPL. We got some support from their secretary. The assignment was, “Make this a big project.” It’s interesting how you make something a big project, involve public and private partners, and make something that is going to make a difference.
We had to start somewhere. How do you do this? We started to talk with private partners, mainly pharmaceutical industries, like, “What would you want from us? We want to do precision medicine. We want to do prevention and respiratory disease. Is there anything that you would be willing to give us money for to do this?” They were like, “We always want to collaborate, but you need to come up with a plan, and then we'll think whether we want to participate.”
This was completely new to us. There was no call or grant. We just had to start a project. We decided to do what we knew how to do and to sit together with the academic researchers that were interested in this and write a plan. That's what we did. With that plan, we went back to the private partners to see whether they would like it. We also went to household lots, which is a governmental body in the Netherlands that is there to stimulate public-private partnerships and can also give grants to stimulate these.
They were enthusiastic. They thought it was a good plan and this could be what they call the strategic public-private partnership. They were very supportive, and they said, “If you get enough money, then we are willing to also give you support.” That was the message with which we could go to the private partners. We had many talks with many different companies until we found them on board. We then officially started the project.
Why did you think you could be successful in pulling together a big project like that out of the blue?
I didn't know whether I could be successful, but I thought it was worth a try. I thought we had a good team and a good plan. It's important to work on the prevention of chronic respiratory disease because this is a disease that gives people a lot of disabilities and problems. The moment that they find out that they have this disease, for example, COPD, they're usually already far in their disease because we've got a lot of overcapacity in our lungs. Before we notice that it's gone, we are already pretty much damaged. At this moment, if you're diagnosed with COPD, there's not a lot we can do.
Career Development: It's important to work on chronic respiratory disease prevention because it gives people a lot of disabilities and problems. When people find out about it, they are usually far in it already.
There's a bit of trying to improve quality of life, but that's about it. I thought that was frustrating, and we should figure out earlier that these people are at risk and maybe then, we will still be able to do something. If you want to do something like this, you have to have something that you believe is important to figure out. I believed in that. I thought that the thing that we were going to do was important. I saw the team that we had, the academic team from Maastricht, Utrecht, Leiden, and Amsterdam.
It is a good team and very good researchers with very different expertise ranging from exposed research, from professionals from Utrecht to lab research and in vitro research with models of lungs on a chip in Leiden intervention studies and Maastricht. We had different expertise on board. Also, I think a key thing to make something like this work is to have the right people on board and have different expertise because that gives the best ideas. I like the team that we have. I thought if we have a good goal and a good team, we should be able to make this work. Let's try and see where we can get it.
Were you willing to fail then?
I always had that in the back of my mind that could happen, but I'm not someone who easily gives up. If it doesn't work, and we had our failures on the way more than enough. We had a company where we had many talks and we had them on board. We had a letter of intent of €600,000, and we were sure that they were on board then I got this phone call and then higher management decided it was not a good idea and they were not on board anymore. We lost a big deal of money and had to start from scratch there again. That was not just once. That happened more often. By the time we became successful, there were other academic people very angry that they were not involved
From the beginning, my feeling been streaming, like, “Please come on board, everyone who wants to be,” but then of course when you're successful and other people are not on board, there are a lot of people that all of a sudden, feel like it should have been different. We had a lot of things on the way. The good thing is that the core team learned to know each other very well. One of the things that Dirkje and Peter were hoping for is more collaboration in the Dutch respiratory medicine field. It worked within P4O2.
I've got such good connections with research that I've never worked with before. We made that work because I like working with this team, and everyone is enthusiastic. We came through these and figured out, “If plan A doesn't work, we went for plan B.” The only way to make something like this a success is to be willing to do that.
In a sense, you had faith that the idea would work because you face challenges and probably what would've been a catastrophic failure in a lot of cases and pushed through regardless, and kept those who also had faith with you and had resilience in a way. It's what psychologist Angela Duckworth calls grit. How important of a character is that in you? Did you develop that when you were younger or was that something you've always had to be very gritty?
That's something that belongs to me. I was never someone to give up. I remember when I was somewhere in high school, and then they say, “You have to choose your subjects. You should choose a certain direction.” Already at that moment, I had a hard time choosing and my parents send me to a bureau where they would test me and would say what I should do.
At that moment they said, “She better not choose the Science subjects because she's much better at Languages and it will be too hard for her to do that.” I was like, “Are you crazy? Are you telling me not to do it?” I immediately decided that I should take all these subjects and I managed to. Now you're mentioning it, if people say I'm not able to do something, I will try. That's something that was in there always. I don't like giving up. If I said I will do something, I will try everything.
Did you do any sports or anything when you were younger?
I wasn't very good at sports. At the time as a student, I started rowing. That’s what I liked because it's a team sport. I like being in a team. I was in a ladies' rowing team for my university in my second year of college. I did that also because I wanted to show I could do it because you have to train seven times a week. Being a not-so-supportive person, that was a challenge to do. After that year, it was also okay. That's one of those things. Doing something together, making it work, and even if you're not extremely successful, but if you're in that team and you've made it into that team, that was something that I liked.
Perhaps that's part of where your faith in collaboration comes from as well because you're rowing in an eight-person team. You have to all work together and you have to have that team. I bring it up because one of the things Angela Duckworth puts out is that children who have the experience of being in something that requires persistence to get to something are the ones who are more gritty. She has a nice scale from the measuring grid. It might be interesting to measure it yourself because that's pretty high.
It’s an interesting point that you have persistence and vision because when you have any innovation or change you try to make, there are always going to be naysayers. What you're saying here is being able to push through that and persevere with the vision. Let's switch a little bit and say, in your opinion, are we lacking leaders like yourself in the life sciences and healthcare innovation?
I don't think so. There are a lot more people who like doing what they're doing and are good at making that happen. These are the people we need. At least around me, I see other people and I see also in my group and in the more junior people around me that they are able to do that. It's very important that we give them these opportunities, that we make it possible, and that we also help them believe in themselves.
It's the fact that Peter believed in me and said, “You are the best person to come and take over my role.” That was a big deal for me. That was something that gave me opportunities. I'm extremely grateful to be there for that. That's also what I try to do. Make sure that people get opportunities. I give them their space to shine and to learn. They're able to do that because you can only know that you can do it if someone gives you the space to try.
He gave you the confidence and the courage to go out and bring P4O2 together. Going back to that the wisdom and protecting his legacy in his team, it was a very smart move on his part.
To learn for all of us, if you are in a more senior position, you have the chance also to give other people the opportunity to grow. There are many talented people out there, and then I'll throw something else. There are a lot of talented females that need some encouragement and need to see that they are able to do this and that they are just as able as their male colleagues. It seems like an open door, but what I've learned over the years is that it's still not always.
There are a lot of talented females that need some encouragement and need to see that they are able to do this and that they are just as able as their male colleagues It seems like an open door, but what I've learned over the years is that it's still not always.
That's a very excellent point because if you look at the percentage of women who are in the leading fields, it still remains less than 50% in science. It's a very important point you make. You're a great example of having the courage to push forward and achieve something.
When I was a PhD student, I became pregnant. My oldest daughter was born when I was still a PhD student. My professor said to me, “I still had plans with you,” when I told him that I was pregnant. I said, “Not anymore?” I realized that it made no sense at all to argue about this. I thought, “Let's show him wrong.” That's the only thing I can do.
Years later, he told me that he regretted what he had said and that I made the things that he was planning. The thing was about going to the US. I said, “I told you we are going to the US. We are going to bring this baby.” That's why we should be very careful of being the bosses. We never do things like this because I am very resilient, but it could also discourage people If people are saying things negatively.
As Peter gave you the confidence and the courage, that could have derailed someone's confidence and courage, which is also an important consideration.
People need to know how big their influence can be. I've got lots of talks with female researchers who are asking me, “How did you do this? How did you have a career and three children and get where you are now?” It's a very important conversation to have because having children changes your life. It's very much not fair to say that everything stays the same because you get responsibility and sometimes you have to be there.
On the other hand, it's also not the end of your career. For my career it's been extremely good because sometimes I was forced to do something else. When you take your mind off things, sometimes that's a good thing. When you put your bank back on, it's refreshed. My children only did something very good for my career, and it didn't stop me from doing anything. It's very important for us to have these conversations with young female post-leaders and give them faith that it can work.
That's a very interesting point because you touched on the fact that it's the creativity that you found interesting. If you look at the literature about creativity and even some of the most creative people, writers, they only work a few hours a day because they need that off time to have those creative thoughts because that's when your subconscious kicks in, and all this tortoise mind. It is an interesting consideration for coupling the family work-life balance there. In some ways, maybe it's an enhancer, not a detractor. With that in mind, is there something that you do when nobody else is watching that enhances your performance as a leader?
Especially when nobody else is watching, it sounds very secret. During the day, I work very hard and it means that I talk a lot. It's important to see all my people on a very regular basis. I almost see all my people every week. That means a lot of 30-minute slots to talk and see what they're doing, how they are doing, especially during COVID. That means my days are very full, but what I do every morning which started there during COVID is walking for an hour between 7:00 and 8:00. In winter, I bring a little light because of the traffic, so I won't get driven over on the dike that I live on.
I take a walk every morning for one hour and during the walk, I have time to think about new things to start to contact, and how I will do that, how I will make them enthusiastic about working with us. That's what you need time for because sitting and answering emails is easy, but thinking about new opportunities or companies that might be interested or new academic partners that we need or, “What organizations? How do I find the person within that organization? Whom do I know that I can try?” That's something that you sometimes need some time to think about.
We're approaching the end of the time here and there have been some great points. What do you read, journal articles or books? What would you recommend? For research and that field, that's an important question to think about.
I'm a big reader. I love reading. I read almost everything you mentioned. I read journal articles because I need to stay up to date. I don't read as much as I maybe would like to, but at least I try to stay up-to-date in my field. I've never been big at reading management books or things like that, but in a course, I got several and I've started to do that. I hear you cite them all the time. It's something that's a bit new to me, but I'm trying to get into it a bit. Sometimes I find it a lot of open doors to be very honest. It's a new thing.
I also love to read novels, thrillers, and whatever I get my hands on. That's my way of relaxing. Before I go to bed, even if I've got an extremely busy day, I'll read a little bit because that's what I need to take my mind off other things. Reading is a big thing in my life. It has always been. As a child, I read ten books a week. My mom still likes to tell that to everyone. My sister only read one. That was the amount we got could get from the library. I also read her somewhere in between because I love it. Reading is important.
Is there a book that you wish you had read when you were younger?
I've always read a lot. There is not a specific book that I should have read when I was younger. You also mentioned a question, “What would you advise your younger self?” That's what I thought about a little bit. I always worked hard and always ran to reach the next point in my life. Sometimes I should slow down a little bit. I still find it very hard with a belief that things will be okay. I would've comforted myself a little bit like, “Don’t go that fast and run that hard because sometimes it's good to be where you are.”
Career Development: You don't need to always work hard and run to reach the next point in your life. Sometimes, you need to slow down a little bit.
On the other hand, I've always liked doing that. For life to keep exciting, I need peaks. That means there are also in-between periods. If life would be a flat line, I would get extremely bored. I do need to sometimes run up a mountain, see the view, and then maybe go down for a little bit. Sometimes I have to enjoy the moment and I forget about it every now and then.
That fits a lot with what you said earlier as well. Is there anything else you wanted to mention or talk about since we're coming to a close here?
I want to thank you for inviting me to this conversation. It's been interesting. If you do a conversation like this, you also start to see patterns in your own behavior, which is interesting, but also I’m thanking you for your help because P4O2 has also been part of its success. Thanks to you because it's good to have someone involved who is aware of governance and how to involve private partners. There's a science in making consortia and you've helped me build it. That's something I'm very grateful for and I'm learning.
That’s my pleasure. People like you are the reason why I continue to do the work that we do.
Let's keep collaborating and make P4O2 reach its goals.
Thank you very much.
Important Links
Ane-Hilse – LinkedIn
About Anke-Hilse Maitland-Van der Zee
Prof dr. Anke-Hilse Maitland-van der Zee is an enthusiastic researcher in the field of Precision Medicine in Respiratory disease. Anke-Hilse is leading a team of approximately 40 people (Assistant Professor, post-docs, MDs, PhD students, research nurses and junior researchers) at the Department of Pulmonary Disease in the Amsterdam UMC. The main aim of her research is bringing precision medicine to clinical practice. Treatment should no longer be one-size-fits-all, but should be optimized for the individual patient with (respiratory) disease. She strongly believes that much more progress in research can be made if pursued by a multidisciplinary team. She is therefore very proud of her great research team. Creating an environment where everyone feels like an important member of the team, and where team members can help each other grow is her main priority. Furthermore, she enjoys bringing people together (both public and private partners) to really make progress in preventing and treating chronic respiratory diseases such as in the strategic public private partnership P4O2 (www.p4o2.org).
Anke-Hilse was trained as a pharmacist, clinical pharmacologist and epidemiologist. After obtaining her PhD she worked as a post-doc at the Human Genetics Center of the University of Texas in Houston from 2003-2005. In 2005 she started to work at Utrecht University, first as assistant Professor and in 2012 as associate Professor in Precision Medicine. In 2016 she was appointed full-professor in the AmsterdamUMC (AMC/UvA) (Precision Medicine in Respiratory Disease). She is among others Principal Investigator of the strategic public private partnership Precision Medicine for More Oxygen (P4O2) of Health Holland, and she is the president of the Federation Innovative Medicine Research Netherlands (FIGON). She has published more than 300 peer reviewed articles.
