Gerald de Haan

Gerald de Haan received his MSc (1990) and PhD (1995) from the University of Groningen. As a graduate student he was employed by the University of Cologne, working on the regulation of blood cell production by growth factors. He became a postdoc at the University of Kentucky with Gary Van Zant where he worked on stem cell aging, and returned to the Netherlands as a fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. He established his own lab at the Department of Cell Biology, where he was appointed full professor in 2005. He was awarded a VICI grant by the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research in 2007.

The general scope of studies in his Laboratory is to further improve the understanding of mechanisms that specify normal stem cell functioning. Studies focus on hematopoietic stem cells, largely because superior technical tools and invaluable functional assays exist to study stem cells in this particular tissue. Gerald’s group is interested in the unique genetic and epigenetic program that distinguishes stem cells from non-stem cells.[vimeo id=”52142397″ align=”center” mode=”normal” autoplay=”no”]