Biography

Biographical Sketch

Diederick (Rick) E. Grobbee was trained as a medical doctor at Utrecht University. He then conducted PhD research in the field of hypertension at Erasmus University in Rotterdam (12/83-6/1986). After a residency in Internal Medicine, he returned to the Erasmus University as an associate professor and then Full professor of Clinical Epidemiology (1993). In Rotterdam he was responsible for the cardiovascular disease research program of the Department of Epidemiology, and was one of the founders of the Rotterdam Study (www.epib.nl/research/ergo.htm). In 1996 he was appointed professor of Clinical Epidemiology at Utrecht University and founded of the Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care (1996), a division of the　University Medical Center Utrecht (UMCU) currently employing approximately 500 staff (www.juliuscenter.nl). In 2008 he founded Julius Clinical Ltd., a full service Academic Clinical Research Organization (www.juliusclinical.com) of which he serves as Chief Medical Officer and Statutory Director. At the University Medical Center Utrecht, he was founding chair of the Center for Circulatory Health at the UMCU governing cardiovascular patient care, research and education. Previous positions include director of the Rotterdam Medical Research Foundation, member of the board of Erasmus University Medical Center, and visiting Associate Professor at Harvard University, Boston. He holds honorary appointments in Sydney and Kuala Lumpur.　 At Utrecht University he was appointed Distinguished University Professor in 2010.

Rick Grobbee has been a (principal) investigator in many large-scale epidemiologic studies and randomized intervention trials relating to the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular, cardiometabolic, and cardiorenal disease. In addition he works on the principles and methods of treatment research, trial design and (big-) data analysis. In the Netherlands he was member of the supervisory board of the Netherlands Heart Foundation and acted in several roles in committees of the National Research Council (ZonMW). He is chair of the Dutch National Research Agenda (NWA) route "Prevention". He has been listed in the top 100 global most influential biomedical researchers (Eur J Clin Invest 2013 Dec;43(12):1339-65) and has consistently been ranked as highly cited author by Web of Science over the last decades.

Rick Grobbee has been on the editorial boards of several journals and (inter) national scientific, search, and site-visit committees. Current journal roles include editor-in-chief of Global Heart (https://globalheartjournal.com/), senior consulting editor of the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology of which he served as editor-in-chief for eight years. He is a past-president of the European Association for Preventive Cardiology and member of the board of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and chair of the ESC Global Affairs Committee. He is member of the board of the World Heart Federation. Rick Grobbee is fellow of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and served as the chair of its Medical Section and Advisory Council for the Medical Sciences. He is honorary fellow of the Indonesian Heart Association and of the Romanian Society of Cardiology.　 In recent years his attention has increasingly been directed towards global circulatory health (www.globalhealth.eu ), and on-line education for which he founded Elevate, a platform providing global post graduate courses, masters programs and eductional consultancy (www.elevatehealth.eu ).　 Rick Grobbee was a recipient of a 2019 NWO Gravitation Award "Exposomics" and current coordinator of three EU grants. In 2017 he was knighted by the Dutch King (Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion). To date, Prof. Grobbee has authored or co-authored over 1,300 scientific papers (PubMed), chapters, and books, and has supervised more than 150 PhD fellows. His Hirsch index (Web of Science) is 151.