Ger Rijkers

Ger Rijkers (1952) is Professor in the Biomedical and Life Sciences and was Head of the Science Department of University College Roosevelt in Middelburg, The Netherlands until January 1, 2018. At UCR, he is coordinator of the Life Sciences track as well as the Biomedical track and the Pre-Medical program. Rijkers coordinates the research program “Maintaining Health”, which includes research on early detection of dementia (Gerda Andringa and Nathalie van de Zande) as well as research initiatives on biobased economy. He is also a participant in the i-4-1-Health project: http://www.ucr.nl/i41health. Since November 2017, Rijkers chairs the committee researching the options to include engineering and innovation in the UCR curriculum.
Rijkers also works as a senior scientist at the Laboratory of Medical Microbiology and Immunology of the St. Antonius Hospital in Nieuwegein. Dr. Rijkers graduated as cell biologist from the Wageningen University in 1977 and finished his PhD thesis on The immune System of Cyprinid Fish in 1980 at the same university. Next he started working in the Laboratory of Pediatric Immunology of the Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital in Utrecht (which now is part of the UMC). In 1984 he became a qualified medical immunologist. Dr. Rijkers has spent 2 sabbatical periods in the USA: in 1983 in the Lab of Don Mosier, at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia and in 1989 in Denver in the Lab of John Cambier at National Jewish. From the Children’s Hospital he went to the Department of Surgery of the UMC Utrecht to work on mucosal immunology of the gastrointestinal tract.