Professor Peter van der Meer received both his MD and PhD cum laude from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He is trained as a cardiologist with a focus on heart failure and cardiac devices. He did a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School with prof. Ken Chien to further train his skills in cardiac stem cell biology.
The group of Prof. Van der Meer consists of PhD students, technicians and post-docs with various backgrounds (biologists, medical doctors, and biomedical-engineers) working on translational research topics to bridge the gap between bench and bedside. His group focuses on understanding the susceptibility to develop heart failure and exploring novel treatment targets and therapies. He is a member of several steering committees of large morbidity and mortality trials investigating the impact of new and old drugs in patients with heart failure, including digoxin and iron.
We are always happy to discuss positions and vacancies with highly motivated and ambitious (bio)medical students with a strong affiliation with topics related to heart failure, in vitro disease modeling, clinical studies, statistics, and/or epidemiology. We often host visiting scientist from abroad.
Current activities
Prof. Van der Meer is a member of the ESC council of cardio-oncology, member of the working group on translational cardiology and peripartum cardiomyopathy of the ESC and associate editor of the European Journal of Heart Failure. He is currently medical director of the coronary care unit of the University Medical Center Groningen.
“A better understanding of why patients develop heart failure will eventually lead to a targeted approach and precision medicine.”