our team

Prof. dr. M. Müller


Prof. dr. Michael Müller is Scientific Director of the Netherlands Nutrigenomics Centre and full professor of Nutrition, Metabolism and Genomics (NMG) and head of the NMG-group within the Division of Human Nutrition at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. He studied chemistry at the University of Freiburg/Germany and performed a PhD thesis in Biochemistry on “Liver drug transporters”. After a 5-year period as post-doc working on liver transporter proteins at the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg/Germany, he moved in 1994 to the University of Groningen (Netherlands). There he was head (1998 as associate professor) of the “Transporter/Bile physiology group”. He is (co)author of more then 160 peer-reviewed publications and has a H-factor of 44. The group studies the molecular mechanisms behind effects of food components (in particular fatty acids) on gene expression and homeostasis and the role of “two hits” in the pathophysiology of metabolic stress and metabolic syndrome.

memberships/awards

Currently, Prof. Müller is a member of the editorial boards of several journals, i.e. the AACR-jounal "Molecular Cancer Therapeutics", the "European Journal of Nutrition", the “World Journal of Gastroenterology”, and the “Journal of Oncology”. He is also a member of the “Faculty of 1000” (Biology/Physiology). He has been part of the organizational committees of several international scientific meetings, a.o. of the first national Nutrigenomics Conference, Wageningen (2001), the International Nutrigenomics Conference 2003, the first International “Personalized nutrition conference (2005), the second NUGO week (2005) and the 10th FENS nutrition conference in Paris (2007). Prof. Müller is also a Network Board Member of the EU network of excellence “Nutrigenomics” (NuGO).

Dr S. Kersten


Dr Sander Kersten is associate professor (tenured) in the Nutrition, Metabolism and Genomics group of the Division of Human Nutrition (Wageningen University). He studied nutrition at Wageningen University (MSc 1989-1993) and performed a PhD thesis in molecular nutrition (1993-1997) at Cornell University on the “Retinoic acid receptor”, an important nuclear receptor with relevance to this programme. After a 3-year period (1997-2000) as post-doc working on the relevance of the nuclear receptor PPARa for fasting related gene regulation at the University of Lausanne (Group Prof. W. Wahli) he moved in 2000 to Wageningen University (NMG-group) on a 5 year tenure track position funded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). He established his own group on gene regulation by PPARs with relevance to energy metabolism. His group consist of 7-8 PhD students, postdocs and technicians. He is (co)author of over 30 peer-reviewed publications.

memberships/awards

Since 2005, Dr Kersten is associate editor of the online journal PPAR Research. Throughout his career he received the following awards:
- Ira and Dorothy Degenhardt fellowship, Graduate School, Cornell University
- Flora Rose fellowship, College of Human Ecology, Cornell University
- Lydia Lueder Darling scholarship, College of Human Ecology, Cornell University
- EMBO long term fellowship, top 10 scoring long-term fellows Spring 1997
- Roche Research foundation fellowship. Hoffmann La-Roche
- Fellowship Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW)

Other members of the NNC:
    Dr. Lydia Afman (Human Nutrigenomics)
    Dr. Guido Hooiveld (Systems Biology)
    Dr. Mark Boekschoten (Bioinformatics & Pathway mining)
    Dr. Philip de Groot (Bioinformatics & Databasing)
    Dr. Nicole de Wit (Intestinal nutrigenomics)
    Jenny Jansen (Microarray analysis)