prof.dr. M.M. Rovers PhD (Maroeska)

Prof.dr. Maroeska Rovers is the Scientific Director of the Technical Medical (TechMed) Center at the University of Twente. She also is a professor of medical technology and innovation at the Radboudumc, director of Health Innovation Netherlands, and a member of several international boards, such as the scientific committee of Excite international, the IDEAL collaboration, and the Science and Innovation Panel of the EU IHI program.

Her ambition is to contribute to the development of effective, affordable and valuable medical innovations. Her research has been characterized as visionary, innovative, international, and highly productive. In her research, she combines methods and discoveries from various disciplines, such as surgery, epidemiology, health technology assessment, biomedical sciences and policy to make beyond state-of-the-art progress, and then translate these insights into practical tools.

Since the methodology is leading, she is involved in various technological areas, varying from e-health to AI and robotics to implants. Her international (multi-center) projects have shown that she can bring together the joint efforts of internationally leading experts to further develop worldwide innovations. She also has ample experience with the scientific co-ordination of clinical studies, and these studies have demonstrated real impact through the uptake of published findings in international clinical guidelines and by practitioners and methodologists.

Maroeska has obtained several personal awards and prestigious grants for her innovative and interdisciplinary research. For example, she received several grants for excellent researchers, including NWO-VENI (2003), Hypatia (2011), and NWO-VICI grant (2017), as well as awards, such as the Atze Spoor-Award (2003), Elisabeth von Freyburg award (2008),and the Charles F. Ferguson Award (2015). She is an elected member of the Academia Europe and the Dutch academia of Engineers (AcTI).

She is also active in teaching students and in “science4kids” as she like to share her passion for science. Last year (2021) she has been awarded the Radboud Science Award, which enables researchers to process their scientific breakthroughs into teaching materials for primary school.