Marc Van Bilsen

Associate professor

Dr Marc van Bilsen obtained a Master degree in Cellular Biology (University of Leiden) in 1982, and received his PhD degree at the Department of Physiology of the Faculty of Medicine of the Maastricht University in 1988, where he studied the relation between cardiac lipid metabolism and tissue injury during myocardial ischemia and reperfusion. As a post-doc, he worked at the University California, San Diego, CA (UCSD), as a recipient of NATO-Science Fellowship award (NWO) and an American Heart Association award, on the regulation of gene transcription in cardiac hypertrophy (1990–1992). After his return to Maastricht he was appointed as Senior Investigator of the Royal Dutch Academy of Science (KNAW, 1993-1998). In 1998, he was awarded the Edmond Hustinx Price for Science by the Maastricht University and became appointed as Established Investigator by the Dutch Heart Foundation (NHS,1998-2003) to continue his studies on cardiac metabolism in hypertrophy, especially on the role of fatty acids as signaling molecules and regulators of cardiac gene expression. Since 1998, he holds the position of Associate Professor in Molecular Physiology at the Faculty of Medicine of the Maastricht University.

Furthermore, he is currently appointed Chairman of the CARIM Education Programme Committee (EPC) and acts as PhD Coordinator for the CARIM graduate programme.

He has been principal investigator on several national and international grants on the topic of cardiac metabolic remodeling, including a Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) TOP-Program Grant (2004-2009) and an European integratedproject (EUGeneHeart, FP6 LifeSciHealth, 2006-2011). He (co)authored over 120 papers in the cardiovascular field. His current research interest focusses on the interplay between cardiac metabolism and inflammation in the development of cardiometabolic disease in general, and in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) in particular.