Gerdien van Schaik graduated in 1995 at Wageningen University in quantitative veterinary epidemiology. In 2000 she finished her PhD thesis entitled “Introduction of infectious disease into dairy farms” at the department of Farm Economics of Wageningen University. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Population Medicine group of Cornell University, USA and as an associate professor at the Preventive Medicine group of Universidad Austral de Chile, Chile. Since October 2004, she works at Royal GD till July 2021 as the head of the Epidemiology Group and then as senior epidemiologist (0,5FTE). The focus of her chair is on, amongst others, evaluation of current surveillance activities and possibilities for improvement with innovative quantitative methods, such as risk-based surveillance and syndromic surveillance. Het appointment is paid for by a Horizon 2020 project for the development of tools for data-driven control and prioritisation of non-EU-regulated contagious animal diseases (DECIDE) that she coordinates. The DECIDE project with 19 partners in 11 countries has a budget of €10 millon to reduce the impact of endemic infections in livestock and aquaculture. More information:www.decideproject.eu. In addition, she is appointed in the expert panel of the SDa project Care for Young Animals (0,1FTE).