Miriam C. J. M. Sturkenboom

Miriam Sturkenboom is head of the Department of Data Science and Biostatistics in the Julius Center at University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands. She has a PhD from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics in Groningen (cum laude), a pharmacy degree from the same University and a Master in Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. She is past president of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology. She was professor of Observational Data Anlysis at the department of Medical Informatics at Erasmus MC untill 2017, and currently is professor of Real World Evidence at the University Medical Center Utrecht and head of node for the UMC Utrecht in the establishment of the Health Research Infrastructure in the region Utrecht. Her research interests focus on transforming real world data into real world evidence on drug use, effectiveness and safety in vulnerable populations (children, pregnancy and elderly). She has and is creating international ecosystems that allow for federated analysis of real world data to learn about the use and effects of medicines after marketing. She coordinated the IMI funded ADVANCE public private collaboration, aiming to establish a tested ecosystem for the monitoring of benefits and risks of vaccines, as a direct result she co-founded the Vaccine Monitoring Collaboration for Europe (VAC4EU) of which she is the elected president. She is coordinator of the IMI-funded ConcepTION project, building an ecosystem to assess drugs safety in pregnancy and lactation. She was member of the WHO Global Advisory Committee for Vaccine Safety. She coordinated several studies on COVID-19 vaccine safety monitoring for the European Medicines Agency.