Andre Uitterlinden

André G. Uitterlinden is a Professor of Complex Genetics and with >50 group members head of the Laboratory of Population Genomics at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam. His previous research involved identifying genetic factors for common traits and diseases (e.g., osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, anthropometry, age at menopause), and is now focused on working in the 1+ Million Genomes (1+MG) project in Europe, and implementing genetic information in health care and prevention settings. In 2005 he initiated the Human Genomics Facility (HuGeF; www.glimdna.org ), which is now one of Europe’s largest genomics facilities, providing services for DNA isolation, genotyping, sequencing, and data analysis, and is handling millions of samples for a global client portfolio.

Between 2005 and 2010 he initiated the widely used array/GWAS datasets and DNA/RNA sequence datasets (WES, microbiome) of two Erasmus MC cohort studies: the Rotterdam Study (25,000 elderly subjects) and the Generation R birth-cohort (n=25,000 children and parents). He (co-)initiated several global GWAS consortia (e.g., GEFOS, CHARGE, Reprogen, MiBioGen). He is PI of the strategic GOALL project within Erasmus MC (“Genotyping On ALL patients”). In 2020 he became member of the coordination team of the European 1+ million genomes initiative, and therein leads the “Genome of Europe” project to establish >100,000 reference genomes. He has co-authored over 1500 papers (H-index 193), has supervised 40 PhD students, and is leading annual courses on complex genetics and genomics.