This week Jaco Zwanenburg of UMC Utrecht received a Vici grant from NWO, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. Jaco is receiving a Vici grant for his research on heart rate as a source of information about the health of our brain. This grant of one and a half million euros will allow him to conduct innovative research and expand his research group over five years.
Jaco Zwanenburg is associate professor of Advanced MRI in the Department of Radiology. Whereas existing MRI techniques to determine vascular damage in the brain are limited to static, indirect measures such as infarcts, Jaco wants to change this by developing new MRI techniques that allow researchers to study the disease process at the level of the vessels themselves, and at a much earlier stage.
In recent years, thanks to an ERC starting grant, Jaco has developed MRI techniques that can accurately map the distortion of brain tissue with the heartbeat. With this Vici research proposal, he wants to go further by also developing MRI methods to measure the distortions for respiration and vasomotion. Jaco: “The innovative part of my proposal that I will link established methods from seismology to the analysis of my MRI images. With this ‘seismology of the brain’ program, I will build a research platform that can be used by medical researchers to study and understand disease processes such as microangiopathy in a non-invasive way. The dot on the horizon is to develop new biomarkers that can be used as targets for drug development in collaboration with pharma companies.”
Together with the Veni and Vidi grants, the Vici fellowship is part of the NWO Talent Program and is intended for highly experienced researchers who have successfully developed an innovative line of research. The scientists are among the top ten in their research field. In addition, they have proven that they can act as coaches for young researchers. With the grant, the researchers can further develop their own research group over five years. A total of 33 Dutch top researchers will receive a Vici grant of one and a half million euros each.
