Daan Westenbrink

Daan Westenbrink is a cardiologist and a translational scientist at the University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands.  He studied medicine at the University of Groningen and, previous to his current appointment, he completed a PhD program at the University of Groningen and a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California San Diego, USA. He is also licensed as a clinical pharmacologist and is ESC certified in heart failure, cardiac device therapy and cardiac MRI.

His research group consists of (clinical) research fellows, MD/PhD students and master students from different backgrounds, working on new ways to recharge the failing heart.  The research is translational in nature and includes fundamental studies to uncover the root cause of myocardial energy deficiency as well as clinical trials testing new strategies to restore energy in patients with heart failure. His group also employs advanced MRI techniques to study mitochondrial metabolism and cardiac function during exercise.

Dr. Westenbrink has received grants from the European Society of Cardiology, the Netherlands Heart Foundation and the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research and he has received several awards for his research. He has been an Associate Editor of the European Journal of Heart Failure from 2009-2014, is currently a member of the editorial board of the Netherlands Heart Journal, and serves as a reviewer for several other journals, including Circulation, Circulation research, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, the European Heart Journal, Cardiovascular Research and the European Journal of Heart Failure.