Last Friday it was announced that DTL’s Scientific Advisory Committee member Cisca Wijmenga will receive the NWO Spinoza Prize 2015, the highest award in the Netherlands science arena. She is one of four laureates, who will each receive €2.5 million to spend on scientific research.
Wijmenga, Professor of Human Genetics at DTL Partners University of Groningen and University Medical Center Groningen, is elated. “This is incredibly good news for my research work, for my research group, for the many patients who have made my work possible over the past 20 years by willingly cooperating with my projects, for the UMCG and the University of Groningen, and certainly for my department! The NWO Spinoza award is not only a prize, an honour, but also primarily a huge encouragement for my further research work”.
Cisca Wijmenga is a leading researcher, both nationally and internationally, in the area of complex genetics and in particular the genetic risk factors that play a role in celiac disease, a chronic intestinal disorder. She has identified the risk genes for this disease and also developed a reliable, simple and cost-effective method of testing for these risk genes. Wijmenga is also director of BBMRI-NL2.0, the Dutch project for biobank collaboration, which stores tissue samples and data from patients and healthy people.