Olle (Th.J.) ten Cate, PhD

Olle ten Cate attended medical school at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands and has spent his professional life from 1980 serving medical education. In 1986 he completed a PhD dissertation on peer teaching in medical education. Until 1999 he was closely involved with all of the University of Amsterdam’s major preclinical and clinical curriculum reforms, education research, program evaluation and educational development. In 1999 he was appointed full professor of Medical Education at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, and program director of undergraduate medical education at University Medical Center Utrecht. From 2005 to 2017 he lead the Center for Research and Development of Education at UMCU. His research interests include curriculum development, peer teaching, competency-based medical education, and many other topics. From 2006 until 2012 he served as president of the Netherlands Association for Medical Education. In 2012 was appointed adjunct professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, next to his work in Utrecht, to execute a collaborative doctoral program in health professions education. He has published extensively in the medical education literature (400+) and supervised and supervises many doctoral students (30+) in medical education research. He serves on the editorial boards of Medical Teacher and the Journal of Graduate Medical Education, and was a member of the Executive Committee (2012-2017) and a Fellow of the Association for Medical Education in Europe; he is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association. In 2017 he received the John P. Hubbard award of the National Board of Medical Examiners of the USA for his extensive work in competency-based medical education and assessment, and the Han Moll Award of the Netherlands Association for Medical Education for his contributions to medical education; in 2018 he received the first biennial international Ian R. Hart Award for innovation in medical education, in 2020 a Royal Dutch distinction (Officer in the Order of Oranje-Nassau) for his work, and in 2023 the Harmen Tiddens Medal of UMC Utrecht for his international contributions to health professions education.