Professor Marion Koopmans

Prof Marion Koopmans is the Director of the Department of Viroscience at Erasmus Medical Centre, Netherlands, a WHO Collaborating Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases. She also serves as Scientific Director for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Netherlands Centre for One Health (NCOH) and as Scientific Director of the Pandemic and Disaster Preparedness Centre in Rotterdam/Delft, Netherlands. Prof Koopmans has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the Danish Technical University and is a Fellow of the Royal Water Research Institute. 

Prof Koopmans has led several large-scale research consortia and is currently the Principal Investigator of the national network on arbovirus research (OHPACT) and an EU-funded consortium, VEO, which develops risk-based innovative early warning surveillance in a One Health context. She is also the Deputy Coordinator of DURABLE, a HERA-funded network of centres of excellence for emerging infectious disease research preparedness. In 2021, she founded the Pandemic and Disaster Preparedness Centre (PDPC), a multidisciplinary research centre focusing on the prevention of pandemics and climate-related disasters, integrating expertise from technical, biomedical, environmental, and social sciences. 

Prof Koopmans’ research focuses on emerging infections, with a particular emphasis on understanding pathways of disease emergence and spread at the human-animal interface. Her work consistently emphasizes the development of global networks to systematically and collaboratively combat infectious diseases. She is also committed to translating scientific data for policymakers and effectively communicating science to lay audiences, for which she has received numerous prestigious awards. 

Prof Koopmans is an elected member of the Dutch National Academy of Sciences and a recipient of the Stevin Prize, the highest national recognition for research of international standing in the Netherlands.