dr. Esmée Bakker PhD

Over Esmée Bakker

Esmée Bakker is an assistant professor at the department of Primary and Community Care of the Radboudumc. Her long-term goal is to improve physical and mental health and prevent cardiovascular events in individuals with and without cardiovascular disease. Her research vision is to develop personalized physical activity prescriptions, including 24-hour movement behaviours (i.e. physical activity at different intensities, sitting and sleep) using novel physical activity metrics. I combine physical activity epidemiology with data science, and integrate newly available socio-medical data sources incorporating the individuals’ (living) environment and social context.

Esmée started as dual PhD candidate at the department of Physiology of the Radboudumc and the Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences of the Liverpool John Moores University (UK). Her thesis was entitled ‘Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour in the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease’. During her PhD, she developed expertise in analysing very large and complex datasets and combining different data resources such as cohort data, electronic patient files, data of statistics Netherlands and health insurance data. She performed two international research visits at the Iowa State University (USA) and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NO). In 2019, she received the Christine Mohrmann Stipendium for promising and excellent female PhD candidates.

After a 1-year postdoc at the department of Physiology (Radboudumc), Esmée performed an international postdoc at the University of Granada after receiving the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship of the European Commission. During her international postdoc, she focused on the interaction between exercise, the heart and brain. In addition, she extended her expertise on raw accelerometry data of research- and consumer-based wearables and collaborated with the industry to develop wearable-based interventions to improve physical activity levels. Since January 2024, Esmée started at the department of Primary and Community Care of the Radboudumc. She is part of the Radboudumc Prevention Hub and is team leader of the ‘Data for Health’-team. She focusses on creating a data infrastructure using regional and national databases/sources, developing new and innovative (digital) techniques for data collection and extraction, and using these new techniques to advance health and risk monitoring in patients.

During her career, Esmée collaborated with researchers and physicians on an international and multidisciplinary level. In addition, she became associate editor of the (high-impact) European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, was elected as a nucleus member of the ‘Population Science and Public Health’-section of the European Association of Preventive Cardiology and is collaborator of the Prospective Physical Activity, Sitting and Sleep (PROPASS) consortium. In addition, she has been invited for several lectures at international congresses and received several (young investigator) awards.

Her work has also been recognized by social media and society, in which she provided interviews for national tv (e.g. NOS news), radio stations (e.g. Radio 538, FunX), newspapers (e.g. de Volkskrant, de Gelderlander, AD) and magazines (NewScientist).

Opleiding

• BROK gecertificeerd (2017 - nu)
• Epidemioloog B, Vereniging voor Epidemiologie
• Dual PhD degree in Medical Sciences, Radboud University and Liverpool John Moores University
• Artificial Intelligence for health, Radboudumc & Jheronimus Academy of Data Science
• Summerschool - Big Data in Health Research, Utrecht University
• Master Biomedical Sciences, Radboud University
• Bachelor Biomedical Sciences, Radboud University

Onder­scheidingen

• RNVH jubilee prize 2025 of the Radboud Network of Women Professors.
• Young investigator award 2023, Secondary prevention and cardiac rehabilitation, European Association of Preventive Cardiology.
• Young investigator award 2022, Population Science and Public Health, European Association of Preventive Cardiology
• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Postdoctoral Fellowships 2021, European Commision
• Christine Mohrmann Stipendium 2019, Radboud University

Nevenfuncties

• Congress Committee ESC Preventive Cardiology 2027
• Associate editor of the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology
• Nucleus member of the Population Science and Public Health section, European Association of Preventive Cardiology
• Collaborator of the Prospective Physical Activity, Sitting and Sleep (ProPASS) consortium.

Expertise

• Epidemiology
• Data science
• Cardiovascular health
• Physical activity & exercise
• Sedentary behavior
• Cardiac rehabilitation