Dr AHC van Kampen (b. 1967) has been appointed extraordinary professor of Biological and Biomedical Information Sciences, in particular Medical Bioinformatics, at the Faculty of Science of the Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA). The chair has been endowed by the Society for the Advancement of Natural Sciences, Medicine and Surgery (Genootschap tot Bevordering van Natuur-, Genees- en Heelkunde).

An important part of Antoine van Kampen’s research concerns the development of bioinformatics methodology for the analysis and interpretation of large and complex sets of experimental data available through, for example, microarray studies. The use of public biological, biomedical and literature databases plays a significant role in this. One specific project will focus on the development of knowledge bases for representation and presentation of biological and biomedical information for selected biological processes and associated disorders. In the future, these knowledge bases will be of use in the analysis and interpretation of experimental data. In addition, such knowledge base enables researchers, physicians, patients and others who are interested to search relevant information in a structured way and on several levels and thus gain insight in matter that is often complex. As part of this research, the concept of e-bioscience will be used where possible: scientific projects within the domain of life sciences, which are executed collaboratively using advanced ICT research infrastructure.

Dr Van Kampen has been senior university lecturer at the Academic Medical Center (AMC) since June 2006 and is head of the Bioinformatics Laboratory of the AMC, which he initiated in 1997. He has been scientific director of the Netherlands Bioinformatics Centre (NBIC) since March 2006. Because of his appointment, he will be conducting part of his activities at the Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences of the Faculty of Science of the UvA from March 2007. Dr van Kampen will be dedicating himself to advancing the collaboration between the several bioinformatics and informatics departments of the Faculty of Science and AMC in order to strengthen the biological and biomedical research.