Elly Hol

Elly Hol is Vice-Dean of Research of the University Medical Center Utrecht, professor of “Glia biology of brain diseases” at the Utrecht University, a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), and a member of the Academia Europaea. She is head of the department of Translational Neuroscience at the University Medical Center Utrecht Brain Center. Her research is focused on the role of glial cells in brain diseases. The overall aim is to elucidate the molecular and functional changes in glia that contribute to the pathogenesis of neurological and psychiatric diseases. Her work is translational and includes studies on glial cells in human post-mortem brain tissue, in human cell models, and in mouse models for brain diseases. Elly was trained as a medical biologist with a specialization in molecular neurobiology. After her PhD in Utrecht, she obtained a Max-Planck Fellowship to work at the Max-Planck-Institute for Psychiatry in Martinsried. In 1997, she started as a post-doc at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam, and between 2003 and 2013 she headed the group “Astrocyte Biology & Neurodegeneration”. She was appointed professor of "Biology of glia and neural stem cells” at the University of Amsterdam in 2012. As of 2013 she works as a principal investigator at the department of translational neuroscience, UMC Utrecht Brain Center. She is in the editorial board of Glia and she is a board member of the Medical, Biomedical, and Health Sciences Domain of the KNAW.