Koen Reesink

Assistant Professor

Dr Koen Reesink was originally trained in Electrical Engineering and has been active in biomedical research for over 20 years. His interests and specialties are vascular structure and function, ventricular-vascular hemodynamic interaction, system dynamics and signal processing. Dr Reesink’s group has made significant and awarded contributions to quantify and interpret arterial stiffness measurements, especially in clinical settings. Reesink leads his research line ‘Constitutive and system characteristics of large arteries’ within in the CARIM programme 'Complex Arrhythmias' (PI Prof. Tammo Delhaas).

Dr Reesink contributes actively to research organisational development, as initiator/chair of the Vascular Network Group, as steering group member of the CARIM Muroidean Facility, and as chair of the Operational Excellence project MF2BMC around the new Biomedical Center (BMC) for animal research in Maastricht.

Dr Reesink’s current research line ‘Constitutive and system characteristics of large arteries’ is focussed on unravelling the multi-scale structure-function relations that underlie the pathophysiology of accelerated arterial stiffening. Quantitative insights into these relations are of utmost importance to conceive, develop and validate therapeutic approaches for de-stiffening arteries, in order to combat the growing epidemic of ‘old-age’ systolic hypertension and its desastrous cardiovascular and societal sequelae.

Reesink is currently involved in the EU H2020 Demonstrator project CARDIS (as WP co-lead), and in the EU grant proposals MSCA-ITN-EJD2019 MINDSHIFT (as coordinator) and COST VascAge (as participant).