Dutch researchers in the United States - United States
Dutch researchers in the United States
The United States and the Netherlands are strong partners in groundbreaking research that improves lives and helps us better understand our world. Read below about some of the Dutch researchers in the United States.
Previous interviews and profiles
Dr. Mark Brongersma and his team at Stanford University’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering get excited about using tiny structures to manipulate light.
This dynamic is all around us. It’s light interacting with molecules in the air to make the sky look blue and water droplets to make clouds look white.
But when you think tiny, Dr. Brongersma is working with particles 10,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. His research is helping make chips run faster, clothes cool bodies efficiently, and hydrogen fuel emerge from water.
In this interview, we explore how infinitely small-scale research has massive real-world impact. Dr. Brongersma reflects on his work to date, the benefit of working with industry, and how to attract brilliant minds to compelling research.
Silicon crystals
Mark Brongersma comes from a family of scientists and professors. Eager to follow in their footsteps, at the age of 6 he projected how long it would take him to become a professor and was upset when he realized it would take him 30 years.
Nineteen years later, he was earning a PhD at the AMOLF research Laboratory in Amsterdam and working with Albert Polman, a pioneer in the field of nanophotonics.
At the time there was substantial interest to see if electronic chips could be made faster by using light particles to transfer data, in addition to electrical currents.
Dr. Brongersma explained the research: “To see whether it would be possible to use light, we needed to develop some of the smallest light sources and ways to transport light on the chip.”
Researchers discovered that silicon, the main material computer chips are made of, can emit light when chopped into little silicon bits, or nanocrystals. Brongersma worked on demonstrating how the size and shape of the silicon crystals could be used to control the effectiveness and color of the light emission.
Later, he also found that light can be guided along metallic particle arrays and wires on the chip. Following these early findings, during his postdoc at the California Institute of Technology, which to this day has an ongoing collaboration with AMOLF, he studied how to make the tiniest wires that could transport light on a chip.
His amazing research solved an important piece of the puzzle of how to make super-fast energy-saving computer chips.
Soon after conducting that research, Dr. Brongersma became a professor at Stanford University, and achieved his childhood goal in less than 30 years.
Keeping science real
Dr. Brongersma loves technology and advocates strongly for the importance of applied research: “Often the best fundamental questions come from technological questions where you suddenly have to think in a completely different way.”
Through his work at Stanford, he has successfully translated his science into applied technologies by co-founding a startup, Rolith. The company, which was later acquired by Metamaterials Technologies Inc., applies nanostructures to large areas, for example, in the windows of the flight deck to protect pilots from laser attacks.
This solved an important problem, as there are roughly 20 laser beam attacks in the US every night. The attackers, mainly children near airports, point lasers at pilots when planes are taking off or landing, and the nano-coated glass blocks the light of the laser pointer, but still allows the pilot to clearly see the outside world.
Reflecting his commitment to applied research, about 30 percent to 40 percent of his work at Stanford is funded by industry, and this has enabled ongoing innovation in his work.
“Government research funding has stayed more or less steady, and at the same time, companies have realized how we can use this knowledge of how to make and use nanostructures and optics to make better components,” he said. “That together has moved our research, a little bit more from fundamental research to more applied research.”
In an industry collaboration with Samsung, which has entered the race for self-driving cars, Dr. Brongersma works on LIDAR scanning laser beams.
With company ENEL Green Power, he’s implementing state-of-the-art solar cells that have nanostructures on top to increase their efficiency. The solar cells that he is working on in his lab are so thin, “about a hundredth the thickness of a human hair,” that they become flexible. This result in easy applications, for example, to the wings of an airplane or other automotive vehicles.
Finally, with augmented reality (AR) startup Magic Leap, he’s innovating to improve AR glasses, which today are still bulky. By applying an invisible coating of nanostructures on the glasses that capture and redirect light, they can look like regular eyeglasses and become more user friendly, allowing the wearer to move and see virtual images blended in their true surroundings, without feeling nauseous.
These extensive experiences with applied technologies have shown Dr. Brongersma that collaboration with industry should be done thoughtfully.
For example, Stanford facilitates collaboration with industry through an affiliate program. For an annual fee of $150,000, a company can have active engagement with research programs and meet faculty and the brightest students.
This creates a win-win dynamic as money flows into research and infrastructure at the university, while students hear directly from industry leaders about the problems they are trying to solve and where they need support and new collaborations.
The Netherlands is one of the key players in the field of photonics and it has played a leading role in optics since the discoveries of Willebrord Snellius and Christiaan Huygens 400 years ago.
“The Netherlands is especially good at fundamental research,” Dr. Brongersma said, and he believes some university groups may consider working more closely with industry. “Get more companies involved to push to keep science real, because some people do brilliant things that are completely useless. So why not try to solve really hard problems that industry has?”
He stressed that universities should do work that companies think is too far out: “You need to have that 10- to 20-year horizon for research.”
Attracting the best of the best
Dr. Brongsmera is also committed to supporting and cultivating talented young researchers. Seven out of his eight last graduate students all went to Apple.
With tech giants just around Stanford’s corner, it can be difficult for universities to compete for talent. “Graduate students starting at Apple earn basically my salary,” he said, acknowledging that “with a faculty salary, it is extremely challenging to live in Silicon Valley.”
Nobody knows what Apple is working on, but rumor has it that Apple is also working on AR glasses. “There’s a competition, and Apple should be investing in the research and my group, but their way is to just buy up the talent.”
Yet, he is also excited for his students because they land jobs in a matter of weeks. “Part of that excitement is that the things that we are working on are really making an impact now,” he said.
Government could definitely play a role in attracting the best scientists, Dr. Brongersma thinks. When he was in high school, the US was investing heavily in science, making competitive offers to attract the best scientists from all over the world.
“That is, I think, the reason behind the strength of the US economy and it’s going to be the detriment of the US economy to stop bringing the best people here.”
He points out that China today is offering faculty incredible startup packages and resources, making it attractive for the best Chinese students to return to China.
“The costs of brilliant people leaving are hard to put or calculate on paper.” He stressed that governments should make it attractive to bring in more talent: “This is going to cost money, but the long-term benefit of bringing the best people in your country is worth any input,” and points to the incredible economic impact of Stanford in the Bay Area.
Companies that were formed by Stanford entrepreneurs generate trillions of dollars in revenue annually and have created millions of jobs since the 1930s. A study showed that if the companies that were founded by Stanford alumni formed an independent nation, it would be the 10th largest economy in the world.
How to make it attractive to bring in brilliant scientists? In addition to money it includes resources and a good quality of life: “That goes from good infrastructure, to transportation to great restaurants to alI the things that if you ask a young person, what do you value, about living in a certain city or place? If you can make deals, great things happen.”
Could the Netherlands make it attractive for him to return? One of the things that makes Stanford unique is the large size and international nature of its programs. He loves working with so many different people that bring diverse ideas.
“That would be harder to give up,” he said. With a competitive salary it could be interesting to return. Maybe in the role of a dean he could help universities or other organizations move into new directions. “I have many romantic thoughts of going back to Amsterdam and obviously great, amazing science is done in the Netherlands. So, I would not exclude the idea.”
Dutch molecular biologist Dr. Laura van ’t Veer of the University of California San Francisco is a pioneer in the field of personalized medicine and one of the world’s leading innovators in cancer diagnostics.
She is the leader of the Breast Oncology Program and Director of Applied Genomics at the University of California San Francisco, and her work is having a major impact on the field, for which she has received many awards, including the European Inventor Award in 2015.
She was listed by 24/7 Wall Street as one of the 32 Amazing Women Inventors who have succeeded in fields dominated by men.
Dr. van ’t Veer is the inventor of MammaPrint, a gene-based test that predicts the chances of recurrence in early-stage breast cancer patients, sparing women who will derive little or no benefit from chemotherapy.
Chemotherapy is often recommended after surgery to decrease the risk of cancer recurrence. Yet, the side effects of chemotherapy are harsh, and, as Dr. van ’t Veer’s work shows, it might not be needed for every patient. In fact, her studies show that 46 percent of patients with early stage breast cancer who are recommended chemotherapy can safely forego chemotherapy.
Instead of one treatment for all, Dr. van ’t Veer’s revolutionary work is paving the way to change treatment approaches to target a person’s specific tumor. Her goal is to increase each person’s chance of surviving breast cancer using this individualized approach.
Breast cancer: not one disease
DNA and genes have fascinated Dr. van ’t Veer since she was a high school student. She began studying biology at the University of Amsterdam in the late 1970s and worked as an undergraduate at the Netherlands Cancer Institute). There she became acquainted with research on DNA and cancer, which was an innovative new field in the early 1980s.
“From early on I was interested in understanding the gene mutations in breast cancer and how it could help to identify what kind of disease somebody has. Breast cancer is not one disease, but there are many different types,” Dr. van ’t Veer said.
She completed her Ph.D. at Leiden University in the Netherlands and then pursued postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School in Boston. Dr. van ’t Veer found Harvard intense and inspiring. At her first cancer meeting in Boston, she said she was surrounded by 500 experts from different disciplines.
“They were all interested in understanding the biology of cancer and using this knowledge to develop new drugs and to understand the diagnosis,” she said. “I had never experienced this. My experience at Harvard further defined what I was going to do.”
Ground-breaking discovery
Following her postdoctoral fellowship, Dr. van ’t Veer returned to Amsterdam, where she started working for the Netherlands Cancer Institute. She was the first molecular biologist to work in both the institute’s Antoni van Leeuwenhoek hospital and research department. She became head of molecular pathology and set up the molecular pathology diagnostics lab in the institute’s hospital. Leading a multidisciplinary team, she studied the risk of recurrence of breast cancer in women.
“If you understand the risk for recurrence in a patient, you can adjust the patient’s treatment,” she said.
To prevent recurrence after surgery, doctors have recommended chemotherapy for many breast cancer patients based on factors such as the age of the patient, the size of the tumor, and the number of lymph nodes and dividing cells.
“These factors give some indication, but are far from perfect,” Dr. van ’t Veer said. Some tumors look high-risk but in fact are not and the result is overtreatment.
Dr. van ’t Veer and her team took a different approach and looked at the breast tumor’s genes to see if the biology of the tumor could reveal if the cancer is aggressive.
By looking at the activity in the genes of the tumor, they discovered 70 cancer-specific genes which, if switched on, indicate a high risk for recurrence. If these genes are not switched on, the risk for recurrence is low.
Understanding the breast cancer tumor in this way allows for a more tailored approach to treatment.
“If the disease is aggressive with chance of early recurrence, you want to give all of the necessary therapy to prevent this. However, if the disease is very slow growing and the chance of recurrence is low, there is no need to give all of the drugs. Possibly you can even omit chemotherapy,” Dr. van ’t Veer said.
From research to market
Dr. van ’t Veer and her team developed their research finding into a robust diagnostic test to analyze the activity of the 70 genes in the breast cancer tissue and called it MammaPrint, the culmination of years of research and clinical studies.
The test’s validation came from a large clinical trial run by the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer. This trial involved nearly 7,000 women with early-stage breast cancer from nine countries and 100 hospitals.
Recognizing the potential for widespread impact for patients, she wanted to bring MammaPrint to market, so patients outside the Netherlands Cancer Institute’s hospital could benefit from it. For this she needed funding.
To pursue this funding, Dr. van ’t Veer and co-inventor Dr. René Bernards set up a company in 2003 called Agendia. Today, Agendia is a medium-sized company with more than 150 employees, based in Amsterdam and Irvine, California.
At Agendia’s laboratories, a sample of the patient’s tumor is analyzed using MammaPrint. The result shows if a patient is high risk or low risk and recommends who should receive chemotherapy and who can safely forego it.
Today MammaPrint is approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, recommended in national and international clinical practice guidelines, and covered by Medicare and most private insurance companies.
Unique collaboration
For women who are identified by MammaPrint as high risk, standard chemotherapy is still an option. Yet, standard chemotherapy will only prevent recurrence in one out of five patients, and is thus not always effective.
“If somebody has a high risk for recurrence, you want to do better than 20 percent results. You want to bring it up to 100 percent,” Dr. van ’t Veer said. She is tackling this challenge in an innovative clinical breast cancer trial, I-SPY, at the University of California San Francisco.
Through I-SPY, Dr. van ’t Veer is testing new drugs for patients who have a high risk for early recurrence to study which drug or combination of drugs is most effective given the patient’s breast cancer type.
To access the thousands of new targeted drugs that are emerging, Dr. van ’t Veer joined forces with Dr. Laura Esserman, the principal investigator of the trial and breast surgeon at the University of California San Francisco, to set up a unique consortium of 10 pharmaceutical companies, 20 academic institutions, and six biotech companies.
“To fully understand when to use a specific drug for whom, requires a collaboration with all stakeholders,” Dr. van ’t Veer said. “Everybody has a piece of the knowledge. If we work together, it will go faster. It is this particular collaboration that made me decide to come to UCSF.”
Whereas standard chemotherapy in high-risk patients will only prevent recurrence 20 percent of the time, the I-SPY study has already demonstrated that matching new, emerging drugs to the biology of a patient’s cancer, in addition to standard chemotherapy, has a success rate of 40 percent, and for some tumors it is up to 60 percent.
These findings show that understanding the biology of a patient’s breast cancer can help healthcare providers and patients choose the most optimal treatment for the best results.
“You do not want to give a certain drug to a patient who does not respond to that specific drug,” Dr. van ’t Veer said. “Besides this, these treatments are often $50,000 or more, so also to reduces costs, you just want to give it to those patients who will have a response. We have come a long way.”
Dutch computational engineer Dr. Margot Gerritsen of Stanford University in California uses mathematics to solve a wide variety of complex problems and is recognized as one of the top teachers in her field.
Image: ©Linda A. Cicero / Stanford News Service
Dr. Margot Gerritsen uses mathematics to solve a wide variety of complex problems: identifying how to produce oil and gas in a more environmentally friendly way, studying coastal ocean flows, improving sail design for America’s Cup yachts, and designing search engines for digital archives.
She has even used math to model the wings of a pterosaur, a flying reptile in the dinosaur era, for the National Geographic documentary Sky Monsters.
Margot is a computational engineer and professor of energy resources engineering at Stanford University in California.
Aside from her scientific work, Margot is recognized as one of the top teachers in her field. She teaches courses in computational mathematics, energy and sustainability, and has received several awards for her excellence in teaching, such as the Tau Beta Pi award at Stanford.
She is also passionate about the role of women in STEM, and is co-founder and co-director of the global Women in Data Science (WiDS) conference and host of the WiDS podcasts, inspiring women all over the world to enter the field.
Biking to the sea
Dr. Gerritsen loved mathematics from an early age. In sixth grade, her teacher started every morning with a five-minute head-calculation competition, which she often won, and in high school she viewed math problems as fun, complex puzzles. Overtime, math became much more applied and exciting. “I always wanted to understand the world around me a little bit more,” Margot said. “I am intrigued by that. Math is a wonderful language that can be used to express ideas and deepen understanding.”
Born and raised in a small town near the coast in the Southwest of the Netherlands, she often biked to the sea as a little girl. She would stare mesmerized, wondering what would be beyond it.
Years later, when she had finished her masters in applied mathematics in Delft, Dr. Gerritsen won an international graduate scholarship. Eager to explore what was on the other side of the ocean, she chose to study at the University of Colorado at Denver. While in Colorado, she missed the ocean badly, and after one year she left to pursue her Ph.D. in scientific computing and computational mathematics at Stanford University, much closer to the water than landlocked Denver.
First female faculty member
She felt an enormous buzz at Stanford. The environment was competitive, entrepreneurial, and provided a wealth of opportunities. Anything seemed possible.
Stanford was also very intense, Margot said, especially since she was one of the very few women in her field. “People notice you and you are being scrutinized, and I always felt this pressure to perform,” she said. “It is a bit exhausting.” After she finished her Ph.D., she sought a less competitive environment and moved to New Zealand, where she worked for five years as a lecturer at the University of Auckland.
Yet, she began to miss the buzz of intensity that was pervasive at Stanford. Five years later, when she was offered a job as a professor in Stanford’s energy resources engineering, she did not hesitate and became the first woman faculty member in the department.
A virtual laboratory
But how is math used in such diverse areas as petroleum engineering, ocean modelling, pterosaur flight mechanics, and sails design?
Margot uses math to build computerized simulations to better understand or optimize complex physical or engineering processes. She begins by gaining an understanding of the physics of a process.
For example, when helping designing sails for America’s Cup yachts, she first talked to experts in the field, including sailors and sail designers, to understand the physics of the sails and sailflows.
Once she understands the physics, she develops a mathematical model from which she can build computer programs that simulate the process, “like a virtual laboratory,” she said.
For yachts, she simulated the air flow over sail shapes to help design better sails and in the case of petroleum engineering, she uses math to build simulations to identify how to produce oil and gas in a way that it has less impact on the environment.
Saving CO2 emissions
One of the fossil energy projects that Margot is working on today is finding out how to extract heavy oil from underground in a less environmentally harmful way. Heavy oil, Margot said, is sticky and hard to move unless it is heated.
There are several ways to heat heavy oil, but current approaches to burning fossil fuels create high levels of CO2 emissions. Dr. Gerritsen is trying to change the process, and in the approach she is studying, the oil is burned under the ground so that the CO2 is generated in the reservoir, and does not create surface-level CO2 emissions.
However, this process, called “in-situ combustion,” is harder to predict and control than the surface-level process. Through her work, Margot is able to simulate in-situ combustion, which offers better insight into how the oil in the reservoir will burn. With this data, she hopes to increase confidence so that companies are more inclined to use in-situ combustion rather than others that are more harmful to the environment.
100 percent clean energy law
Besides fossil energy production, Margot is an expert in renewable energy and has worked on many projects, such as tidal energy production and the assessment of large scale solar and wind energy projects.
How does she see the future? Will renewable energy be our largest source of energy in 30 years?
“It is quite complex,” Margot said.
Previous reports that addressed these questions, even those from the International Energy Agency, made predictions that turned out to be wrong. There were developments that could not be foreseen, such as major shifts in technology and population and economic growth.
“The thing is, we don’t really know. What I’m hoping is that oil and gas will be phased out. We already see big changes in some places,” Margot said. “In California, for example, we set a renewable portfolio standard that seemed very aggressive even 15 years ago. Our first ambitious goal, set in 2002, was to generate 20% of electricity using renewable sources. In 2015, this was adjusted to 50% by 2030, and we are already nearly there. Last year, California raised this to 100% by 2045.”
Margot said she believes this goal is feasible, but that there will always be niche applications for fossil fuels, such as emergency power, and uses outside of the transport sector.
A shift will depend on effective large scale clean energy storage, but she believes that this hurdle will be overcome. History has shown, she said, that when there is an enormous economic stress in the world because of energy, everybody starts investing in energy.
When she started teaching energy courses 20 years ago, everybody agreed it would take a long time for solar and wind to become cost competitive. Yet, today they have become cost competitive, because some countries, such as China, were economically growing exceedingly fast and needed energy.
China relied heavily on coal, but this had severe health consequences for the population and it became an absolute necessity for China to invest in renewable energy.
As a result, Dr. Gerritsen said, “Solar PV is incredibly cheap right now because markets have a lot of cheaper produces Chinese PV. These things have made a huge change and are incredibly hard to predict.”
Risk-taking culture
After working in the field of energy resources, coastal ocean simulation, and data science for almost 20 years, Margot is looking for some other areas to pursue, and a field that has piqued her interest is wildland fires. Wildland fire mitigation has become increasingly critical in California and the West (of the US).
Margot has many ideas for using simulations in this field, such as creating a better understanding of the fire-induced weather changes, smoke dispersion and smoke associated health risks. She feels that the Stanford research environment provides her the opportunity to pursue these new projects.
“The nice thing about being a professor in a place like Stanford is that that you can set your own research agenda and will most likely find colleagues and students to work with, so I’m very excited about this,” she said.
She appreciates the freedom she has as a professor at Stanford. For example, it took her only three months to start a new master’s in data science program at Stanford ICM. Starting a master’s program in the Netherlands would generally take much longer, Dr. Gerritsen said, as it needs to be discussed and approved at more levels and there are typically more bureaucratic obstacles.
“Here you can often just build what you want. It is a totally different thing,” she said.
She likes the risk-taking culture in the United States, especially in Silicon Valley, where if she has an idea, she can try it.
The Dutch are a bit more risk averse, she said.
“We (the Dutch) try not to upset too many people. We still have a really hard time picking winners and losers,” she said.
When she was in school in the Netherlands, there were no awards for the best students. It was a foreign concept. She understands the sentiment behind it, but at the same time, she believes, it is important to recognize and reward excellence, which is needed to drive innovation.
Dreams
“I’m an unbelievably fortunate person,” Margot said. Jobwise, Dr. Gerritsen’s dream was to be useful to people, and in her job she can be, by mentoring and teaching people and as the co-founder of Women in Data Science (WiDS), an annual conference with women experts in data science as speakers.
When she started in computational mathematics 35 years ago, it was a field comprised of roughly 15 percent women. “It is very frustrating to see that this percentage today has even gone down a bit,” Dr. Gerritsen said.
Many important decisions (e.g. in healthcare, industry, and politics) are made based on data analyses. Data science teams are influential, as they interpret data and make predictions based on this data. Most of the data science teams consist of men and are not diverse. Diverse teams are necessary because they ask different questions and have different perspectives, which can lead to different conclusions.
In addition, there are not enough qualified people in this field at the moment. To inspire more women to work in this field, she started the Women in Data Science Conference, which showcases excellent female experts in data science, the WiDS datathon and a WiDS podcast.
The podcast, in which leading women in data science from all over the world share their work and expertise, was necessary, as articles and interviews on AI up until five years ago were mostly all written or given by men.
Today, in its fifth year, the WiDS conference has gone global with online and satellite events, inspiring women worldwide to enter the field.
“Through the conference we reach over 120,000 people per year,” Dr. Gerritsen said. “A lot of them are women, and if you look for talks now in data science online, you probably will find a talk related to WiDS, which is great!”
Bio & CV
Born: Zeeland, Kloetinge, the Netherlands
1984-1990: Master’s degree in applied mathematics, TU Delft
1991-1996: PhD scientific computing, computational mathematics and mechanical engineering, Stanford University
1997-2001: Lecturer, Department of Engineering Science, University of Auckland
2001-present: Professor in the Department of Energy Resources Engineering, Stanford
2010-2018: Director Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering, Stanford
2015-present: Senior Associate Dean for Educational Affairs, School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences, Stanford
2015-present: Co-director of Women in Data Science and host of the WiDS podcasts
Dutch epidemiologist Albert Hofman, chair of the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, is an expert who studies the causes of Alzheimer’s disease.
Image: ©Harvard Chan School of Public Health
Dutch epidemiologist Albert Hofman spends a lot of time studying the causes of diseases. One of the diseases he is particularly interested in is what he refers to as “the other pandemic” or Alzheimer’s disease.
An estimated 50 million people around the world have dementia, a number expected to triple by 2050. That’s a staggering increase, but Dr. Hofman, an expert in vascular and neurologic diseases and chair of the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, remains optimistic.
That’s because new studies from the Netherlands and the United States show a declining risk of developing Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia.
Live a week, gain a weekend
In the 1800s, the global life expectancy at birth was about 35. In just two centuries, this number has more than doubled. In record countries such as Japan, the average life expectancy of women is today as high as 90. This rapid increase in how long we are expected to live is astonishing, Dr. Hofman said. “Every four years, we add one year to our life expectancy. I summarized this for myself by saying, ‘You live a week and you gain a weekend.’”
Yet, an older population also means that the number of Alzheimer’s cases will increase. “After the age of 60, the risk of developing Alzheimer’s goes up,” Dr. Hofman said, and by the time we reach the age of 90, the chances are one in two of developing the disease.
The impact of Alzheimer’s disease is especially acute in countries like China and India, countries with a booming population that see a rapid increase in the proportion of elderly. Many of these countries are not prepared for the rise in the number of Alzheimer’s patients. “That’s why we call it the other pandemic,” he said.
15 million fewer cases
The reasons behind the increased likelihood for Alzheimer’s as we age remains a mystery. This is not solely a consequence of aging, Dr. Hofman believes, but an accumulation of risk factors.
In studying the causes for Alzheimer’s and dementia, Dr. Hofman gained crucial insights from large population-based cohort studies for age-related diseases, or studies that follow the same people over a period of time. He is the initiator of several large-population cohort studies like the Rotterdam Cohort study, which today includes 20,000 people and focuses on risk factors for cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s. In the data provided by the Rotterdam study, researchers saw a curious trend over the last three decades: a decline in the number of new patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Hofman followed up these findings by starting the Alzheimer’s Cohorts Consortium at Harvard in 2020, which combined the data of seven long-term cohort studies and involved 49,202 people from the US, Netherlands and other European countries. When researchers compared the data from these combined cases, they saw a decline in the number of new Alzheimer’s cases of between 10 percent and 15 percent per decade over the past 30 years.
They also discovered that the risk for men and women to develop Alzheimer’s is the same. “There are more women who have Alzheimer’s disease than men,” Dr. Hofman said, “but that is because women live longer.” In other words, while an aging population leads to more people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s overall, the risk of new cases is declining and if this declining trend continues, researchers estimate 15 million fewer cases in the US and Europe by 2040.
Population cohort studies are a valuable knowledge resource for epidemiology and medicine in general, but there are not that many in the world, Dr. Hofman said. It is easier in the Netherlands, and other European countries to follow people in a cohort study, he said, because the national governments maintain population registrations, including where people live.
Adopt a healthy lifestyle, now!
Scientists do not have a firm answer for the decline in new Alzheimer’s diagnoses. Dr. Hofman believes that non-genetic factors and in particular cardiovascular factors play a big role in Alzheimer’s disease. The vascular system, our circulatory system, is made up of blood vessels that carry oxygen-rich blood from the heart to other parts of the body. If the blood vessels are damaged, the lack of oxygen will cause the nerve cells to gradually die, leading to Alzheimer’s disease.
Dr. Hofman thinks a possible reason for the decline could be improved treatments of risk factors for heart disease and stroke since the 1970s and 1980s in Europe and the US, such as treating high blood pressure, lowering high cholesterol, no smoking and regular exercise. These preventive measures not only reduced the number of heart attacks and strokes, but also likely had a positive impact on the vascular system and brain health. The brain scans of patients who have been treated for blood pressure and cholesterol showed improvement over the years, Dr. Hofman said.
If the vascular risk factors play a major role in causing Alzheimer’s, adopting a healthier lifestyle can be a preventative measure that anyone can adopt.
Controversial drug
In teasing out the causes of Alzheimer’s, Dr. Hofman and his group are working on treatments that can lower or stabilize blood pressure, as large swings in blood pressure can increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s.
And whereas Hofman and his group are focusing on preventative measures, the FDA recently approved the Alzheimer’s drug Aducanumab, the first treatment to attack the progression of the disease. The FDA’s approval created much consternation within the scientific community because of the controversies around the medication’s effectiveness and cost. Hofman belongs to this group of skeptics. “Perhaps, the positive side is that it will stimulate other companies to go on this path and strive to go on,” but he hopes that the European Medicines Agency will hold off on its approval and instead ask for more studies and clinical trials of the drug to provide complete evidence of the drug’s effectiveness.
Dinner with billionaires
Epidemiology is “the quantitative part of medicine,” Dr. Hofman said. It is this formalized way of studying the causes of a disease that fascinates him and which is why he chose to specialize in this field at the department of epidemiology at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam and Harvard in Boston in the late 1970s.
After his fellowship at Harvard, he returned to the Netherlands and later became chair of the biggest epidemiology department in the country. He maintained a connection to Harvard, and taught a summer course at the university for 25 years. In 2016, he returned to Harvard and became chair of the Department of Epidemiology. What makes Harvard and the Boston area appealing to him is the attitude toward science, or as he describes it, “the can-do mentality” and the “sense of urgency.” What’s more, Boston’s academic ecosystem is concentrated: “The Boston area has close to 20 percent of all postdoc positions in the whole of the US.”
When comparing the US research system to the Dutch research system, Dr. Hofman, thinks the educational infrastructure for PhD students in the US could serve as a model for Europe. “It is more developed in coursework, in the qualifying exams and in the in-person training,” he said. It is an educational infrastructure that provides students the opportunity to excel and to grow outliers.
The way the US funds science differs from the Netherlands. The US government, particularly the National Institutes of Health, funds and focuses on the important issues in medicine, but the role of private funds, benefactors, and foundations in the United States is “virtually absent” in the Netherlands.
“The dean and the president of Harvard advise me occasionally to go to the West Coast and to have dinner with a couple of billionaires, which is very nice. And very smart. I’ve never done a thing like that in Europe in the 30 years that I was chair there.”
He sees an opportunity for universities in the Netherlands to adopt this way of fundraising: “Most wealthy people are willing to support major causes in society. Although we spend a lot of time here on fundraising I find it a very nice part of the American system.”
Bio & CV
1951: Born in Hardenberg, the Netherlands
1976: Medical school, University of Groningen
1982: Second research fellowship, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston
1983: PhD, Erasmus University of Rotterdam
1990-2015: Science director, The Netherlands Institute for Health Sciences
1988-2016: Professor and Chair, Department of Epidemiology, Erasmus Medical Center
2016- present: Stephen B. Kay Family Professor of Public Health and Clinical Epidemiology, Harvard
2016-present: Chair, Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Dutch scientist Bert de Jong, who leads Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Computational Chemistry, Materials, and Climate Group, talks about the prospects of quantum technology for developing better car batteries, biochemical research, and optimizing distribution networks.
Image: ©Bert de Jong
In its latest issue, the renowned MIT Technology Review featured a Dutch research team’s quantum technology as No. 1 breakthrough technology in 2020. Indeed, quantum technology is no longer an abstract field of fundamental science, it says. Driven by significant progress over the last couple of years, combined with major supporters across the tech industry, some meaningful applications are emerging. While the Netherlands has a world-famous quantum research cluster, so has the United States. Both countries recently launched ambitious policies to bolster quantum research and step up international collaboration.
Dutch scientist Bert de Jong, who leads Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Computational Chemistry, Materials, and Climate Group, sat down with us to discuss the prospects of quantum technology for developing better car batteries, biochemical research, and optimizing distribution networks, while considering the influence of the Department of Energy’s National Laboratories and how they drive scientific discovery in his field of research.
“Someday we will run a desalination plant here in California completely with renewable energy,” says Bert de Jong. Though he works on molecular science, he always keeps a close watch on what his discoveries will ultimately help to achieve. “I work on exascale computing, machine learning, and quantum. Each of these fields can deliver meaningful breakthroughs.” With COVID-19 on everybody’s mind, people increasingly acknowledge the impact of high-performance computing for fields, such as genomic research and biochemical modeling. “It is secondary which technology pathway will lead to solutions. For me it is important to keep an open mind.”
This attitude reflects the way Berkeley Lab approaches its role in the academic community. “We sit between fundamental academic science and applied research teams within industry. I would say that we are de facto academia on steroids.” He enjoys the freedom at the lab that allows him to work on a broad range of issues, unconstrained by faculty commitments. “The UC Berkeley campus and the lab are connected in many ways, (UC Berkeley’s campus is just a 10-minute walk down the hill from the main Berkeley Lab campus), and we have many joint projects where we work extensively with the talented students on campus.”
The (near) future of quantum
Working with his quantum algorithms team, QAT4Chem, he looks into novel ways to develop chemistry simulations. For Bert, chemistry is one of the first frontiers for impactful quantum technologies. “You see early adoption in a number of industries, many of which are chemistry related, such as pharmaceutical, medical, oil and gas, and energy. “Today, my team works on simulating biochemical systems that can play a role in developing faster drug discovery pipelines and may revolutionize the way we deal with pandemics in the future,” he says. “But it is important for industry leaders to invest now. The first to develop a car battery with 500+ miles capacity will be way ahead of everybody else.”
Other applications he predicts will soon come from sectors where micro-second decision-making is important, such as financial trading or the electric grid. He expects quantum software to see dramatic changes to services even making real-time traffic recommendations for busses, delivery vans, or taxis, among many other innovations on the horizon.
Bert de Jong is also running a new five-year multi-laboratory and university program called AIDE-QC, focused on the development of an open-source software development environment. “Quantum is still a nascent field, and reliable hardware is another five to 10 years away, though early hardware is in use. We can currently do limited chemistry and optimization problems, but mainly we are learning how to perform quantum simulations using real hardware.”
Urgent need for talent
Looking ahead, he points out that there is a scarcity of talent in the field of quantum technology because undergraduate programs in quantum are just now being established and countries have responded differently to the need. “It will be interesting to see what kind of multidisciplinary graduate programs come out of faculties that are far away from the Bay Area. China produces more talent in this field than all other countries combined,” he says. “There is an urgency to invest in talent now. Academia competes with industry for talent in the quantum computing space. In Silicon Valley, corporations hire engineers straight from university and offer much higher salaries than a university can afford. They even hire from campuses before students get their degree.” For academia and for Berkeley Lab, this is a dilemma. They just can’t compete. “With quantum technology trending, Berkeley Lab is fortunate to be able to make somewhat competitive offers.”
To demonstrate how quantum technology is booming, Bert de Jong explains that investment in quantum is not driven by a clear pathway to financial return. “Venture capital is very generous, and they are not expecting profits as soon as they would in other sectors.” Put differently, investors and big tech are hedging their bets, investing in top talent and waiting for future profit. Why are they doing this? For him, this is straightforward, “Invest today, or you will be too late when quantum becomes viable for business.”
Transatlantic opportunities
Even though he has been in the US for more than 20 years, he still works closely with research groups in the Netherlands on specific projects. Given its excellent reputation in quantum science, the Netherlands could do a lot more with the National Laboratories and universities in the US.
Bert de Jong recommends establishing more programs facilitating educational and scientific exchange across the Atlantic. “Since inner-European exchange programs are so much easier to finance, it is often difficult to get European universities to connect to the US – and this is true for all fields, not just for quantum computing. We need to generate as much talent as we can as quickly as possible. Not only in multiple institutions, but around the world. Programs could be established to fund workshops and research exchange for postdocs, graduate, and undergraduate students. I would welcome having more Dutch students participating in my research.” In his view, European students could benefit from having a temporary assignment in the US. “I do admire the educational system in the Netherlands. It’s way more solid and students are much better trained than in a considerable number of universities in the US. But this is primarily the case for baseline undergraduate education. When it comes to breeding excellence beyond that, the US system is far more effective.”
There is a premium for going beyond the norm. This is what compelled him to come and work in the US in the first place. After he finished his PhD in Groningen, he started his postdoc in Washington State at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), working in heavy-element research driven by needs to clean up the Hanford nuclear site. He ended up staying at PNNL for 14 years, eventually leading the team that developed the widely used NWChem computational chemistry code. When Berkeley Lab offered the opportunity to further his research and work on a more diverse research portfolio, he moved to the Bay Area.
Would he consider going back to the Netherlands? “I enjoy coming back to visit family and teach summer school, which I did last year,” says Bert de Jong, but for now he likes having feet planted in both continents.
Bio & CV
Born: Assen, Drenthe, the Netherlands
1987-1990: Bachelor’s in chemical engineering, Technical College of Leeuwarden, the Netherlands
1990-1993: Master’s in chemistry, University of Groningen
1993-1998: Doctorate in theoretical chemistry, University of Groningen
1998-2000: Postdoctoral fellow, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
2000-2014: Chief Scientist, Lead of High-Performance Software Development Group, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
2014-present: Senior Scientist, Lead of Computational Chemistry, Materials, and Climate Group; Team Director AIDE-QC DOE ASCR Accelerated Research in Quantum Computing; Director of QAT4Chem DOE ASCR Quantum Algorithms Team
How do institutions and laws work in different countries? They revolve around a set of ideas and at the same time provide a social space where people work and come together.
Image: ©Jan Sluijter
We spoke with Sarah-Jane Koulen, Assistant Professor of Peace, Justice, and Human Rights at Haverford College, about these concepts and the importance of looking beyond borders and appreciating different perspectives.
Koulen was born in the US, grew up in the Netherlands, and returned to the US to earn her Ph.D. at Princeton University. She serves as a board member to the newly established Dutch Network for Academics in the US (DNA-US).
1. Can you provide a brief overview of your research interests?
My research background is in international law and cultural anthropology, with a focus on international criminal law. The focus lies on the kinds of norms and values that underlie international legal agreements, what agreements are made, what types of conduct are considered international crimes, and how do we cooperate in the field of justice.
My dissertation was a close description of how international lawyers set up the International Criminal Court (ICC) and dived into questions around what it means to work at the ICC and belong to a group of mobile, highly-educated lawyers developing a new field of international legal practice.
Currently, I am working on a project focusing on the intersections between asylum law and international criminal law and how states seek to regulate that. This is quite an interesting discussion in various countries, including the US and the Netherlands.
In the state I currently live, Pennsylvania, there is a large diaspora of Liberians who emigrated here during the Liberian Civil War in the early 1990s and have been here for 30 years. Recently, there have been several immigration fraud cases brought against Liberian American men accused of having lied about their past and possible involvement with armed conflict and war crimes in their application for asylum.
These trials are ongoing, and the questions I am interested in researching further are around who gets to be a US citizen and what the remedy is when asylum laws are violated. Will the men be deported? Can they serve their sentences in the US? What will happen to their families, as they have been building a life in the US for 30 years? And why are these cases being pursued now, 30 years later?
2. What sparked your interest in cultural anthropology and criminal law?
Traveling has been a big part of my life, as I was born here and grew up in the Netherlands, New York City and Trinidad & Tobago. I have always been interested in how things work in different countries. And for me, justice is something you feel. It involves questions of equity, access, and what the state provides. My interest lies with the lives people live in relation to the legal system, and the laws that are in place.
3. What could the Netherlands and US learn from each other in these related research fields?
The Netherlands and the US have strong similarities, but also strong differences. An interesting angle to foster a dialogue around is how social security works, and how people see the role of the state.
In the US, many believe in the idea of freedom and opportunity, which isn’t an exact match with how things are in the Netherlands. For me personally, it meant, at the time, that doing my research here in an interdisciplinary way is easier than in the Netherlands as it is easier to combine different academic disciplines.
Additionally, discussions on tempering the free market and thinking about access and equity are topics that would benefit from international collaboration. For me, the awareness that, as a country, you are not the only one dealing with an issue is important. Other countries deal with similar issues, and there is no one answer but different solutions exist. Looking beyond borders is essential.
4. What is a project you worked on that you are proud of?
In the past I organized a summer school for American university students to travel to The Hague and attend trials of the ICC. For them to learn that these are public hearings, and that you have access to that as a citizen of the world, was very rewarding.
Recently, I traveled with colleagues from different institutes to Rwanda. In cooperation with the University of Kigali, we discussed their views on international law and responses to justice after mass atrocity. It was very interesting to learn more about the current climate and Rwandan context and to improve understanding among each other.
5. How can innovation within education and research help support your work?
As a social scientist, it is not always clear what the concrete impact of my work is. For example, I am not creating a cure for cancer. Having said that, I think the interdisciplinary conversations in the field of anthropology have raised awareness in the global north about the importance of study our own processes.
Anthropologists have traditionally focused on understanding social practices ‘somewhere else’, but more contemporary research focuses on studying our own institutions.
The 2008 financial crisis is a good example of this. Anthropologists looked into the existing banking culture, and the attitudes towards risk and financial product development. See Karen Ho’s 2009 book, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street.
6. What can you take from the cultural anthropology field to other disciplines?
There is a saying within our field: anthropology seeks to make familiar things strange and the strange familiar. It is about covering and reflecting on the unspoken norms. It helps to shed light on aspects of your work.
For example, the other day I was teaching a biology class and we talked about human cells, and the use of these cells for scientific research. We discussed the ethical questions: What does it mean to use human cells? What is the culture in a lab that shapes how scientists engage with the social, ethical side of using human tissue samples? What does informed consent look like, and is access to the benefits of scientific advancement (e.g, Covid vaccines) equitable? I believe these interdisciplinary conversation are extremely valuable.
7. How does your cross-cultural background affect your work?
For me it comes back to the idea of perspectives. When you grow up you become accustomed to things, but that is not the only way of doing things. It comes down to the value of each person’s experiences, and to be open to understanding that your perspective is not the sole perspective.
In the last 10 years, the quality of political debate and civic discourse has changed. There is greater polarization between political groups in both the US and the Netherlands. There are important challenges around access to information, the difference between a free exchange of ideas and hate speech and increasing partisanship rather than collaboration.
8. Last, but not least, what would be your advice to prospective students in your field?
Just try and give things a chance! Talk to as many people as you can. Ask questions. Submit that application and see what might happen.
Bio & CV
1985: Born in Manhattan, New York City
2007: Bachelor of Arts, Social Sciences, University College Roosevelt, Middelburg, the Netherlands
2009: Master of Laws, Human Rights, Conflict & Justice, School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS School of Law, London, United Kingdom
2011: Master of Arts, International Development, Radboud University, Centre for International Development Issues (CIDIN), Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
2016: Master of Arts, Cultural Anthropology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
2018-2021: Commissioner, Dutch National UNESCO Commission (Appointed by the Dutch Minister of Education, Culture and Science)
2023: Ph.D. Cultural Anthropology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA (expected defense January 2023)