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 Pitié-Salpêtrière 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

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

Organisations

Ancillary activities

  • Maquet Critical Care AB, Solna, SwedenContract research
  • Sonion Health BVContract research

Publications

2026

Cross-View Attention Fusion Net: A Prior-Guided Dual-View Representation Learning for Cardiac Output Estimation from Short-Term PPG Signals (2026)[Working paper › Preprint]. ArXiv.org. Zhang, Y., Cui, B., Fresiello, L., Veltink, P. H., Donker, D. W. & Wang, Y.https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.19666More ECMO Flow, Same PCWP: Just What the Model Tells Us (2026)Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 87(17), e735-e736. Meuwese, C. L., Donker, D. W., Fresiello, L., van Mieghem, N. M. & Broomé, M.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2025.09.1612Spoilt for choice? Temporary mechanical circulatory support in cardiogenic shock: The importance of the patient (2026)Perfusion, 41(1 Special issue EuroELSO 2026), 60S-65S. Donker, D. W. & Fresiello, L.https://doi.org/10.1177/02676591261424661Guiding complexity in V-A ECMO weaning decisions for cardiogenic shock: Insights from a conjoint analysis (2026)Perfusion (E-pub ahead of print/First online). Hermens, J. A. J., Van Til, J. A., Van Loon, L., Barrett, N. A., Swol, J., Lorusso, R., Van Dijk, D., Meuwese, C. L. & Donker, D. W.https://doi.org/10.1177/02676591261443856Exploring weaning-related shock: Cardiac injury and overload, platelet-endothelial cell activation, and inflammatory response markers following ECMO decannulation (2026)Perfusion (E-pub ahead of print/First online). Pladet, L. C. A., Elzo Kraemer, C. V., Nierkens, S., Hermens, J. A., Rademaker, E., Derde, L. P. G., Meuwese, C. L., Donker, D. W. & Cremer, O. L.https://doi.org/10.1177/02676591261439583Standardization of In Vitro Evaluation of Extracorporeal Life Support (ECLS) Devices for Research and Development (2026)Interdisciplinary Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, 41(4). Article ivag054. Arens, J., Belliato, M., Broman, L. M., Clauser, J., Donker, D. W., Lorusso, R., Malfertheiner, M., Rajsic, S., Swol, J., Vercaemst, L. & Prahl Wittberg, L.https://doi.org/10.1093/icvts/ivag054Standardization of In-Vitro Evaluation of Extracorporeal Life Support (ECLS) Devices for Research and Development (2026)ASAIO Journal. Arens, J., Belliato, M., Broman, L. M., Clauser, J. C., Donker, D. W., Lorusso, R., Malfertheiner, M., Rajsic, S., Swol, J., Vercaemst, L. & Wittberg, L. P.https://doi.org/10.1097/MAT.0000000000002623Computational physiological models for hemodynamic management in critical care: a systematic literature review focusing on model design, credibility and clinical readiness (2026)Computers in biology and medicine, 205. Article 111561. Mulder, M. P., Warnaar, R. S. P., Arendshorst-Ruuls, T. F., van Loon, L. M., Meuwese, C. L., Broomé, M., Oppersma, E., Donker, D. W. & Fresiello, L.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compbiomed.2026.111561Physiological-model-based neural network for modeling the metabolic–heart rate relationship during physical activities (2026)Computer methods and programs in biomedicine, 277. Article 109240. Zhang, Y., Fresiello, L., Veltink, P. H., Donker, D. W. & Wang, Y.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmpb.2026.109240Temporal evolution of arterial pulse pressure trajectories as early predictor of weaning success in venoarterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (2026)Perfusion (E-pub ahead of print/First online). Hermens, J. A., Fennema, A., van der Tak, K., Imholz, D., Fresiello, L., Pladet, L. C., van Steenwijk, M. P., Meuwese, C. L., Donker, D. W. & van Loon, L. M.https://doi.org/10.1177/02676591261439578

Research profiles

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