prof.dr. D.W. Donker MD (Dirk)

Full Professor
TNW-BIS-CRPH
d.w.donker@utwente.nl
+31534897675
Business card

In March 2021, I was appointed on the chair of Cardiovascular and Respiratory Physiology (CRPH) at the faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Twente.

The chair is specifically intended to stimulate translational research and education. This, in order to allow patients and health care professionals to maximally benefit from the latest ingenious technologies integrated into modern clinical practice. In this sense, I consider my academic-clinical ambitions equally important as my dedication to professional education in technical medicine, biomedical technology and medicine.

I am indebted for the opportunity to combine my professorship with a position as a senior staff member and intensivist-cardiologist in the Intensive Care Centre at the University Medical Centre Utrecht.

The care for patients with acute and life-threatening disease remains complex and challenging. My experience from daily critical care underlines my enduring personal aspiration to advance technological innovation and improve clinical practice.  

After attending medical school in Essen, Germany, I received my PhD thesis entitled ‘Cardiac mechanomyopathy - integrating the picture from cell to beating heart’ from Maastricht University in 2008. Meanwhile, I completed my medical specialization in Cardiology followed by Intensive Care training at the Maastricht University Medical Center. In 2013, I joined the staff of the Intensive Care Centre at the University Medical Centre Utrecht and in 2019, I expanded my academic-clinical experience in Cardiological Critical Care at the La PitiĂ©-SalpĂȘtriĂšre hospital in Paris.

My clinical, educational and research interests center around complex cardiovascular and respiratory care. In recent years, I focused on cardiac and pulmonary extracorporeal life support to optimize its clinical use and expand practice-relevant mechanistic insights. My affinity with echocardiography and an inspiring collaboration on patient-specific computer simulation through the years has greatly enlarged my comprehensive physiological understanding and contributes importantly to my work as a physician.

I am actively involved in national and international scientific organizations in the field, collaborate with many dedicated clinicians, researchers and companies, authored many scientific publications and provided numerous presentations. All this, to foster professionals’ enthusiasm and strive to realize a continuing translation of technology, where it is most urgently needed: at the bedside of the individual patient.

Expertise

  • Medicine and Dentistry

    • Patient
    • Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation
    • Extracorporeal Life Support
    • Cardiogenic Shock
    • Adult
    • Inpatient
    • Assisted Circulation
    • Extracorporeal

Organisations

Ancillary activities

  • Maquet Critical Care AB, Solna, SwedenContract research

Publications

2025

Acquisition of respiratory surface EMG: A systematic literature review of electrode configurations and methodological reporting (2025)Critical care, 29(1). Article 476. Warnaar, R. S. P., Francovich, J. E., van Baaren, L., Donker, D. W., Jonkman, A. H. & Oppersma, E.https://doi.org/10.1186/s13054-025-05696-xAdvanced serial analysis of the diaphragm surface EMG: insights into the effect of pressure support on the neuro-ventilatory response during the ICU stay (2025)Critical care, 29(1). Article 258. Warnaar, R. S. P., Cornet, A. D., Beishuizen, A., Donker, D. W. & Oppersma, E.https://doi.org/10.1186/s13054-025-05424-5Is bedside empiricism the genuine gold standard of daily clinical practice? Rethinking evidence in extracorporeal care and perfusion (2025)Perfusion, 40(8), 1723-1726. Donker, D. W.https://doi.org/10.1177/02676591251395937Modeling age and sex variations of arterial pressure and cardiac hemodynamics in a virtual population using a 01-1D cardiovascular simulator (2025)American journal of physiology : Heart and circulatory physiology, 329(5), H1212-H1228. Wardhana, G., van Loon, L. M., Potters, J.-W., Fransen, A., Lafort, A., Kilic, Y., Donker, D. W. & Fresiello, L.https://doi.org/10.1152/ajpheart.00387.2025Challenges in zero-flow blood pressure as a measure of mean circulatory filling pressure: Experimental and computational perspectives (2025)Physiological Reports, 13(19), e70599. Article e70599. van Loon, L. M., Mulder, M. P., Dort, D. I. M., van der Hoeven, J. G., Donker, D. W. & Lemson, J.https://doi.org/10.14814/phy2.70599ReSurfEMG: A Python Package for Comprehensive Analysis of Respiratory Surface EMG (2025)Sensors (Switzerland), 25(20). Article 6465. Warnaar, R. S. P., Moore, C. M., Baccinelli, W., Soleimani, F., Donker, D. W. & Oppersma, E.https://doi.org/10.3390/s25206465Patient-Specific Size and Age Scaling in a Zero Dimensional Cardiovascular Model (2025)ASAIO Journal (E-pub ahead of print/First online). Lundquist, A., Maksuti, E., Donker, D. W. & BROOMé, M.https://doi.org/10.1097/MAT.0000000000002528Context-specific clinical applicability of the end-expiratory occlusion test to predict fluid responsiveness in mechanically ventilated patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis (2025)European journal of anaesthesiology, 42(8), 737-746. Mulder, M. P., Potters, J.-W., van Loon, L. M., Rumindo, K., Hallbäck, M., Maksuti, E., Donker, D. W. & Diez, C.https://doi.org/10.1097/EJA.0000000000002181Unravelling Sleep Apnea Dynamics: Quantifying Loop Gain Using Dynamical Modelling of Ventilatory Control (2025)Sleep. Nassi, T.-E., Amidi, Y., Oppersma, E., Donker, D. W., Redeker, N. S., Westover, M. B. & Thomas, R. J.https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsaf213Physiological-Model-Based Neural Network for Heart Rate Estimation during Daily Physical Activities (2025)[Working paper › Preprint]. ArXiv.org. Zhang, Y., Fresiello, L., Veltink, P. H., Donker, D. W. & Wang, Y.https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.10144

Research profiles

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