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Richard Grol Visiting Scientist Award 2018 for Heather Whitson

* Nominated

Heather Whitson is Associate Professor of Medicine with Tenure in the Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina, USA. Dr Whitson was nominated for the award by René Melis of theme Healthcare improvement science.
Considering her impressive CV as well as her inspiring lecture and college tour in Nijmegen on 12 April 2018, the RIHS management had an easy task in deciding to award Heather Whitson.

* About Heather Whitson

Dr. Heather Whitson is an Associate Professor of Medicine with Tenure in the Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina, USA. Dr. Whitson's research is focused on improving care and health outcomes for people with multiple chronic conditions. She is interested in improving care delivery systems and intervention programs to better serve medically complex patients. Against this background she focuses on frailty as a generic characteristic of aging and predictor of negative health outcomes. She is a pioneer in the subject of resilience, specifically physical resilience. Physical resilience is defined as one’s ability to withstand or recover from functional decline following an acute or chronic health stressor. Physical resilience is a topic that has received considerable interest and support in the aging research community in the United States (with Dr. Whitson as a strong voice in the field), and this topic is likely to enable collaborative research efforts between Duke Aging Center and Radboudumc, where geriatrics investigators are leading European initiatives to elaborate the construct of physical resilience. As the Deputy Director of the Duke Aging Center, Dr. Whitson leads research efforts aimed at promoting physical resilience to late-life stressors. As such, she is co-PI of the NIH funded Physical Resiliencies: Indicators and Mechanisms in the Elderly (PRIME) Collaborative and a Core Leader in Duke’s NIH funded Claude D. Pepper Older American Independence Center, which conducts research within its theme: optimizing physical resilience. Dr. Whitson applies the knowledge and understanding of resilience gained from this research in an interdisciplinary team seeking to improve peri-operative outcomes for frail or at-risk seniors who must undergo surgery.

* About the award

The Radboud Institute for Health Sciences honors a foreign researcher or teacher with the Richard Grol Visiting Scientist Award. This award is named after the founder of the institute.

> read more about the award

John Graunt Award 2018 for Alessandro Vespignani

* Early work

Alessandro Vespignani received the John Graunt Award 2018, in recognition of his ground breaking research in the spreading of lethal infectious diseases. With his work,  Vespignani contributed to health protection of people around the planet by combining two research fields: epidemiology and network science. He showed that the social network of people plays a major role in the spreading of viruses. And this forms the basis for health scientists who are building models for the prediction and prevention of the spreading of viruses such as Zika and Ebola.

* Research group

Professor Vespignani’s research activities focus on the data-driven computational modeling of epidemic and spreading phenomena and the study of biological, social and technological networks.

* About the award

Since 2016, the Radboud Institute for Health Sciences honors an outstanding scientist every two years for their extraordinary achievements in one of the population sciences.

> read more about the award

Career Jobs and internships

RIHS offers ample positions for talented and ambitious new colleagues. There are frequent job openings for talented researchers, technical personnel and students alike. These positions are advertised on this website.

Hypatia Tenure Track Grant

A significant impact on healthcare is at the core of the Radboudumc. It is, of course, far from the only institution seeking to achieve this. What sets Radboudumc apart is its level of commitment to selecting the best people and supporting them in order to achieve its vision. To demonstrate this, the medical center awards the prestigious one million Euros Hypatia Tenure Track Grant, to attract the most talented scientists.

Internships

RIHS welcomes students to perform internships within our institute. Many departments are very open and willing to accommodate ambitious students. Internships are not centrally organized in our institute. We recommend that you browse the Radboudumc/Research website for interesting topics and directly contact (a limited number of) principal investigators with your resume, motivation, duration of internship and desired start date.

Useful links

• Current vacancies Radboudumc
• Career Radboudumc
• Radboudumc research departments
• International research Master’s
• PhD programs
• Radboudumc Hypatia Tenure Track

Contact and getting there

Visiting address

Radboud Institute for Health Sciences
Geert Grooteplein 27
6525 EZ Nijmegen

Postal address

Post 148 RIHS
P.O. Box 9101
6500 HB Nijmegen
The Netherlands

Contact

T: +31 (0)24 361 46 39
E: rihs@radboudumc.nl
W: www.rihs.nl

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