Prof Jaap Seidell

Prof. Jacob C. Seidell was appointed as full professor (2002-present) and head of the Institute for Health Sciences (2003-2013) at the VU University in Amsterdam. Since 2013 he is appointed as ‘university professor’ at the VU University and co-director of Sarphati Amsterdam, a multidisciplinary research institute that focuses on healthy development of children through healthier lifestyles and environments.

He obtained his MSc (1983) and PhD (1986) at the Department of Human Nutrition at the University of Wageningen, The Netherlands. He was awarded a senior research fellowship by the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) for the period 1988-1992. From 1992-2002 he was head of the Department for Chronic Diseases Epidemiology at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment. He also worked as a researcher in Sweden, the United States and Canada.

His research focuses on the understanding of determinants of food choice and the effectiveness of (policy) interventions in  the context of the prevention and management of non-communicable diseases in general and of obesity in particular. He (co)-authored well over 600 scientific papers and chapters in books on these topics. His h-index according to Web of Knowledge is 99 (in Google Scholar 144).  Besides this he also writes columns and op-eds for leading national newspapers and he published four books on nutrition for the general public. He chaired numerous committees which produced dietary guidelines for the general population as well as for people with diabetes or obesity and he was a frequent consultant to the World Health Organization on these matters. He is a principal advisor to national and local governments as well as NGO’s on public health and prevention.

He has served as president-elect and as president (1992-2000) of the European Association for the Study of Obesity and was editor-in-chief of the "European Journal of Clinical Nutrition" (1996-2006) and “Public Health Nutrition” (2006-2014). He is a member of the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW) .