Epidemiology

Durk-Jouke van der Zee
Durk-Jouke van der Zee is Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering at the Faculty of Economics & Business, University of Groningen. His research focuses on health care systems engineering. Research themes include hospital planning & control, and the design of care chains and networks - thereby linking pre-hospital and intrahospital care services. Project examples include development of cost-effective organizational models for regional acute stroke care, big data analysis of patient flows in care networks seeking to improve care plans and resource use, strategic staff planning and ambulance network design and operation.

Extra keywords: Health Services, Quantitative Methods, Health Organization, Health System Engenineering

Esther Metting
Esther Metting is psychologist and epidemiologist, currently working as assistant professor at the University of Groningen. Her dissertation (2017) was titled “Development of patient centered management of asthma and COPD in primary care” with a strong emphasis on the use of technology and patient involvement. Esther’s unique experience in clinical, behavioural and implementation science have led to a solid and multidisciplinary basis for eHealth research. In the past years she has coached and lectured numerous bachelor, master and PhD students with different backgrounds and from different faculties.

Esther managed several (international) research projects with scientists, health care professionals, patients, staff and students. Esther has chaired a large international research project in three European countries and the results of this project led to adaptation of clinical guidelines. She has worked as project manager eHealth in a large health care organization and is board member or advisor in several societal and patient organisations. Furthermore, she is an expert in the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. Her hands-on experiences with patients, health care professionals and health care organisations are valuable in her daily work. Collaboration partners are among others: National eHealth Living Lab (NELL), International Primary Care Respiratory Group, Dutch Ministry of Health, international Respiratory Effectiveness Group.

Extra keyword: eHealth

Michiel Rienstra
Graduated in medicine at the University of Antwerp, Belgium in 2003. Obtained a PhD at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands in 2007 on Atrial Fibrillation, Underlying Disease and Prognosis. I completed my cardiology training at the University Medical Center Groningen in 2012, where continued working as clinical cardiologist and researcher. I was awarded with a NWO Rubicon grant in 2009 and went to Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Framingham Heart Study for a post-doc on population genetics and epidemiology in 2010-2011. In 2012 I was awarded with the NWO Veni grant for his project on genetics of atrial fibrillation. In 2015 I received the European Society of Cardiology academic grant for his project on a big data approach in atrial fibrillation. I am work package leader of 4 large national consortia; RACE V (hypercoagulability and AF progression), RED-CVD (early detection of cardiovascular disease in general practices), AI (catalyzing the application of artificial intelligence in CV disease), and MyDigiTwin (Big-data and Artificial Intelligence-based ecosystem to create a user’s personal “Digital Twin”). I am steering committee member of several investigator-initiated clinical studies (RACE 2 to 7, MARC 1-2, VIP-HF, DECISION). I am fellow of the European Society of Cardiology and the American Heart Association, and Scientific & Clinical Education Lifelong Learning Committee (SCILL) member of the AHA - Genomics and Precision Medicine council.

Corinna Glasner
My name is Corinna Glasner. I live in a world where little microbes matter, the world of medical microbiology and infection prevention, the world of human health. After I finished my PhD “Bacterial fingerprints across Europe” in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Infection Prevention at the University Medical Center Groningen and a short adventure in Cambridge at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, I am now, since August 2016, the scientific project manager of two INTERREG projects called “EurHealth-1Health” and “health-i-care”. Together with around 50 science, business and health partners in the Dutch-German border region, we try to combating antibiotic resistance and improving infection prevention. With our work we want to protect humans and in turn patients in our border region and beyond. With my work I learn and live every day in and for our exciting border region and Europe.

Lilian Peters
Lilian Peters PhD is an assistant professor/epidemiologist at the Department of Midwifery Science which is located at both the University Medical Center Groningen and Amsterdam University Medical Centers (location Vumc). She conducts research in the area ofMaternal and Child HealthEpidemiology and focuses on theeffect of lifestyle and pregnancy and birth events on future maternal and children’s health. Her projects intersect with primary care, secondary care, public health and epidemiology.This topic is of significant interest and cutting edge in current women’s health care around the world. Due to this unique position she is also appointed as an adjunct research fellow at the Western Sydney University (Australia).

Extra keywords: Maternal and Child's Health

Annelieke Roest
Annelieke Roest is assistant professor at the Department of Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences at the University of Groningen. Her research themes include the epidemiology of mental disorders, more specifically anxiety and depressive disorders, and healthy ageing. She has a profound interest in the (bidirectional) associations between somatic diseases and mental health problems. She uses different research methods to answer her research questions, including systematic review and meta-analysis, involving close attention to publication/reporting biases. Examples of studies she is involved in are the Lifelines cohort study and the World Mental Health surveys.

Extra keywords: systematic review and meta-analysis

Behrooz Z. Alizadeh
Starting from DDRI Tehran (1992), Dr. Behrooz Z. Alizadeh is an MD and specialist in Genetic Epidemiology who obtained his MD from TUMS Tehran (1997), graduated in MSc (2001) and DSc (2002) degrees from NIHES, Rotterdam, his Ph.D. from EMC - EU, Rotterdam (2005), and completed his postdoctoral fellowship in functional ImmunoGenomics at UMC Utrecht (2007). Since 2009, he is a staff member of the department of epidemiology acting as the head of the unit of Personalized Medicine (2016). He is a member of research and educational programs and committees at UMCG Groningen, at METC UMCG (2012), and scientific international institutions, who holds visiting professor positions at several universities. He is well-known for his consultancy and advisory in organizational scientific developments, set-up of large scale research programs, consortium formation, genetic epidemiology, statistics, methodology, and translational science to several (inter)national research groups, and scientific institutions. During the 15 years of his professional scientific career, he has achieved >180 publications of which the majority are published in the top 10% high impact peer-reviewed journals such as nature, science, nature genetics, world journal psychiatry, gastroenterology, plosmedicine, american journal of human genetics, circulation, etc…. He has (co)supervised 20 PhDs fellows and postdocs.

As a principal investigator in different cohorts, research programs, or consortia (eg. MinldLines, Lifelines, RadioGenomics, IAIHG, ARAS, AZAR, CHARGE) and educational institutes (eg. GUIDE, SHARE, GSMS, CPE) in the Netherlands and abroad, his current research is focused on the genetic epidemiology of digestive system, psychiatric disorders, and radiotherapy, with a goal to the devising, modeling, and clinical and societal implementation of personalized medicine. To this end, h is group utilize and integrate heterogeneous data from various domains of genomics, exposome, clinical, medications, and patient-reported outcomes . In his view personalized medicine is a health care process or even societal program, rather than a research outcome!

Wim Krijnen
Wim Krijnen received his PhD in 1993 in the field of psychometrics. Since 2013 is he a professor (Lector) in Applied Statistics and Research Methods within the group Ageing and Allied Health Care at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen, The Netherlands. Since 2012 is he a lector in Statistics at the faculty of Science and Engineering of the University of Groningen. He supervises several PhD students FAITH Research (funded by SIA-SPRONG). FAITH is the abbreviation of Frailty by Assessment, Intervention and Technology towards Health and entails the development of an infrastructure of research on frail and vulnerable populations. The FAITH consortium is a consortium of the professorships of the northern Universities of Applied Sciences (Hanzehogeschool and NHL-Stenden) with expertise on frail elderly and 25 partners ranging from care organisations, SMEs and health insurers. He is interested in high level applied multidimensional statistical methods and their usefulness for solving health problems such as frailty.

Valentina Gallo
Valentina Gallo is a Rosalind Franklin Fellow and Associate Professor in Epidemiology and Sustainable Health at Campus Fryslân, University of Groningen where she is Head of the Department of Sustainable Health. She trained in Medicine and Surgery first and Clinical Neurology after, at University of Rome La Sapienza (Italy). Valentina then gained an MSc in Demography and Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in 2004, and a PhD in Clinical and Experimental Neurology at the University of Rome La Sapienza in 2010. Valentina moved in 2006 to London (United Kingdom) to start her academic career at Imperial College London (ICL), the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine , and Queen Mary University of London. Valentina was awarded several research grants, including the HEADING and the BRAIN studies by the Drake Foundation as a co-Principal Investigator. In total, she obtained the equivalent of £1.3M research funds. Valentina’s research basic is focused on the epidemiology of neurological disease, molecular and environmental epidemiology; she is alo engaged in inter- and transdiscipliniary research on global and sustainable public health and climate change adaptation. In 2015 and 2018, Valentina was appointed as Visiting Professor at the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli in Naples (Italy) by Prof Paolo Chiodini.