Miriam Sturkenboom

Miriam Sturkenboom is head of the Department of Datascience and Biostatistics in the Julius Center at University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands. She has a PhD from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics in Groningen (cum laude), a pharmacy degree from the same University and a Master in Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. She is past president of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology. She served as expert to EMA, FDA and WHO. She was professor of Observational Data Anlysis at the department of Medical Informatics at Erasmus University till 2022, and since 2022 is professor of Real World Evidence at the University Utrecht.

Her research interests focus on transforming real world data into real world evidence on drug use, effectiveness and safety in vulnerable populations (children, pregnancy and elderly). She has created international ecosystems and infrastructures that allow for health data mining, pooling and analysis to learn about the use and effects of drugs after marketing, since 30 years.  She led workpackages in several FP-6, 7 and Horizon funded projects and coordinated 3 large FP-7 projects (SOS, ARITMO, SAFEGUARD). She coordinated the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) funded ADVANCE public private collaboration, with 47 partners. This project aimed to establish a tested system for the monitoring of benefits and risks of vaccines, she transformed this project into the sustainable Vaccine Monitoring Collaboration for Europe (VAC4EU), an international non-for profit association with currently 30 member organizations. VAC4EU was set up in 2020 and was instrumental during the COVID-19 pandemic to monitor COVID-19 vaccine safety for EMA and vaccine manufacturers. Miriam is coordinator of the IMI-funded ConcepTION project, with 88 organisations, ConcePTION has established  an ecosystem to assess drugs safety in pregnancy and lactation.  Through the European Pharmacoepidemiology & Pharmacovigilance research network she coordinated the 4 studies on COVID-19 vaccine & medicines safety monitoring for the European Medicines Agency. The department of Data Science and Biostatistics that she leads since November 2020 has now more than 80 persons, and her RWE team grew from 1 to 30, with 15 nationalities, showing a diverse, open, multidisciplinary and team science spirit. She has published more than 400 articles, promoted more than 50 PhD students, and focuses on open science and addressing societal needs through health data science on medicines. She is strategic head of node of the Health Data Space Utrecht in the Dutch national research data infrastructure (Health-RI), and member of the UMCU data board.