Meike Bartels PhD

Meike Bartels (1973) is University Research Chair Professor in Genetics and Wellbeing at the Department of Biological Psychology, Vrije University Amsterdam. After an internship at the Queensland institute of Medical Research in Brisbane, Australia, she graduated in Psychology at the Vrije University. Her master degree is in Physiological Psychology, with special focus on Behavior Genetics. She obtained her PhD degree in 2003 under supervision of Prof. Dorret Boomsma. During the last months of her PhD, she worked at the Virginia Institute of Psychiatric and Behavior Genetics, Richmond, VA, USA together with Prof. Edwin van den Oord.

In 2014 she was appointed as full professor under the competitive and honorary University Research Chair program of the Vrije University. She published over 160 papers in peer-reviewed journals, including the first molecular genetic evidence for well-being in PNAS and the first genomic variant for well-being in Nature Genetics. Over the course of her PhD, she increasingly realized that the majority of individuals remain free of psychopathology throughout their life. Ever since she broadened focus and became interested in well-being.