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Dr E.M. Derks (1975) has been named Professor by Special Appointment of Genetics in Psychiatry at the University of Amsterdam’s (AMC-UvA) Faculty of Medicine. The chair was designated on behalf of the Foundation Volksbond Rotterdam (Stichting Volksbond Rotterdam).

Eske Derks investigates the role of genetic factors in psychiatric conditions, including addiction, anxiety disorders, compulsive disorders and schizophrenia. She is interested in the wide variety of symptoms typical of patients with a psychiatric condition. Derks pays particularly close attention to the development of new statistical methods aimed at discovering associations between genetic variants and psychiatric conditions. The ultimate aim of her research is to fully identify the biological processes that result in a psychiatric condition, starting with the genetic mutation and ending with the psychiatric diagnosis.

Derks has been a university lecturer at the Psychiatric Department of the Utrecht University Medical Center since 2007. Before coming to Utrecht, Derks obtained her doctorate degree cum laude from the VU University Amsterdam and worked for some time as a post-doctoral researcher at the Wellcome Trust Center of Human Genetics in Oxford, UK. From October 2010 to April 2011, Derks was a visiting scientist at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane, Australia. In 2008 she was awarded a Veni grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. Derks has published extensively in international journals including Molecular Psychiatry, Schizophrenia Bulletin and Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.