Prof. Cornelia M. van Duijn, PhD
Professor of Epidemiology at Oxford Population Health and Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford

Cornelia van Duijn has a Master’s degree (Human Nutrition & Mathematical Statistics) from the Wageningen University (1987) and received her PhD in Genetic Epidemiology from Erasmus University Rotterdam (1991).

In 2001, she was appointed as a full professor of Genetic Epidemiology at the Department of Epidemiology of the Erasmus University Medical Centre, where she worked for over 30 years.

In 2016, she was co-appointed as a Medical Delta professor at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) as a Professor of Translational Epidemiology. She became a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and moved to the Nuffield Department of Population Health in 2018, where she is a full-time professor of Epidemiology.

Cornelia is currently based at the Oxford Big Data Institute where she integrates large-scale (epi)genetic, transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolomic and microbiome data of epidemiological cohorts with that of brain imaging and cellular models. Cornelia’s research focuses on dementia and Alzheimer’s disease and glaucoma but her interest spans systemic vascular, endocrine and gastrointestinal pathology that is relevant for the brain function. She has published over 1300 scientific papers and graduated over 52 PhD students.

Cornelia is a leader in several international genome-wide association and sequencing consortia including CHARGE (Cohorts for Heart & Aging Research in Genome Epidemiology). Over the years, she served on numerous scientific committees, including the European Research Council (ERC) Advance Research Grants committee. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Netherlands eScience Center, Supervisory Board member of Lifelines, Netherlands Heart Foundation, Finish Institute for Molecular Medicine (FIMM), Medical Research Council Neurosciences and Mental Health Board (MRC NMHB), DZNE and France Genomique.

In 2022, she ranked #14 among Top Female Scientists in the world and #2 in the United Kingdom. In 2023, she ranked #108 among the Top Scientists in the field of Medicine in the world and #16 in the UK.