Ineke Braakman appointed in board of NWO

UU-professor Braakman appointed head of domain Exact and Natural Sciences

Ineke Braakman

Prof. Ineke Braakman, Professor of Cellular Protein Chemistry, will become the chair of the domain Exact and Natural Sciences (ENS) on January 1, 2017 of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). “The current board of NWO is delighted about the new appointments and looks forward to realising a supple and quick transfer in the autumn in good consultation with the new board,” says Jos Engelen, chair of the Governing Board of NWO.

NWO has taken an important step in the transition to a new organisation with a new governance. The members of the new Executive Board, who will assume their responsibilities with effect from 1 January 2017, are now known. Besides the new chair of NWO announced at the start of June, professor Stan Gielen, the Executive Board will consist of a member for Operations and Finances and four scientific members, who after the amendment to the NWO Act will each chair one of the future domain boards. These four scientific members are professor Ineke Braakman, professor Jeroen Geurts, professor Jaap Schouten and professor Wim van den Doel. Caroline Visser will be the board member with the portfolio Operations and Finances. The members of the new Executive Board will assume their responsibilities on 1 January 2017.

About Ineke Braakman

Prof. L.J. (Ineke) Braakman (1960) will become the chair of the new NWO domain Exact and Natural Sciences (ENS) with effect from 1 January 2017. Ineke Braakman has been Professor of Cellular Protein Chemistry at Utrecht University (Bijvoet Centre for Biomolecular Research) since 2000 and studies the formation of proteins in our cells and the possible abnormalities in these that can lead to diseases such as cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer's and ALS. She studied pharmacy at the University of Groningen where she also obtained her PhD degree on the topic of ‘Hepatocyte heterogeneity in organic cation transport’. During a postdoctoral period at Yale University she obtained four years of experience in molecular cell biology. Over the years she has received funding from NWO for her research, including NWO Chemical Sciences, NWO Earth and Life Sciences and from ZonMW.

Braakman has extensive experience in research management. From 2003-2006 and from 2012-2013 she was a member of the board of the Department of Chemistry of Utrecht University. She also was co-chair of the Dijkgraaf committee that generated in 2014 the visiondocument ‘2025 Chemistry and Physics: Fundamental for our Future’, and she was a member of the committee that implemented the Sector Plan Physics and Chemistry (Breimer committee). Between 2006 and 2012 she was a member of the board of the NWO Chemical Sciences division.

More about Ineke Braakman

New NWO: new organisation and new board structure

The organisation of NWO will be set up in a more efficient and transparent manner. The current nine divisions of NWO will be clustered into four domains: Exact and Natural Sciences (ENS), Applied and Engineering Sciences (AES), Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) and Health Research and Development (ZonMw). Furthermore, the institutes will be brought together in an institutes organisation.

With effect from 1 January 2017 the organisation will start with the new organisation structure and the members of the new Executive Board will assume their responsibilities. After an amendment to the NWO Act, Ineke Braakman, Jaap Schouten and Wim van den Doel will become the domain chairs of ENS, AES and SSH respectively. Geurts will start on 1 January as the chair of the independent ZonMw, which is expected to be integrated as the fourth domain within NWO by the start of 2019.

The future Executive Board of NWO will function as a collegiate board and will be responsible for the integral strategy and programming of the organisation and the allocation of the budget across the domains and institutes. These changes will enable NWO to position itself more strategically, to increase its decisiveness and organisational capabilities, to deploy funds more flexibly, and to increasingly work with a single coherent programming. 

In the press release of NWO you can read more about the members of the new Executive Board of NWO.