dr. Esmée Bakker PhD

About Esmée Bakker

Esmée Bakker is a postdoctoral researcher at the department of Primary and Community Care of the Radboudumc (NL), and at the department of Physical Education and Sports of the University of Granada (ES). Her long-term goal is to improve health and clinical care in patients with cardiovascular diseases (i.e. coronary artery disease, heart failure), in which she believes that digital innovations and tools are important strategies to improve lifestyle, health monitoring, and risk stratification in preventive cardiology. Furthermore, Esmée combines epidemiology, physiology, cardiology and data science in her research work.

Esmée started as dual PhD candidate at the department of Physiology of the Radboudumc and the Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences of the Liverpool John Moores University (UK). Her thesis was entitled ‘Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour in the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease’. During her PhD, she developed expertise in analyzing very large and complex datasets and combining different data resources such as cohort data, electronic patient files, data of statistics Netherlands and health insurance data. She performed two international research visits at the Iowa State University (USA) and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NO). In 2019, she received the Christine Mohrmann Stipendium for promising and excellent female PhD candidates.

After a 1-year postdoc at the department of Physiology (Radboudumc), Esmée performed an international postdoc at the University of Granada after receiving the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship of the European Commission. During her international postdoc, she focused on the interaction between exercise, the heart and the brain. In addition, she extended her expertise on raw accelerometry data of research-based wearables and collaborated with the industry to develop wearable-based interventions to improve physical activity levels. 

Since January 2024, Esmée started at the department of Primary and Community Care of the Radboudumc. She is part of the Radboudumc Prevention Hub and is team leader of the ‘Data for Health’-team. She will focus on creating a data platform using regional and national databases/sources, developing new and innovative (digital) techniques for data collection, and using these new techniques to advance health and risk monitoring in patients with cardiovascular diseases. 

During her career, Esmée collaborated with researchers and physicians on an international and multidisciplinary level. In addition, she became junior deputy editor of the (high-impact) European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, was elected as a nucleus member of the ‘Population Science and Public Health’-section of the European Association of Preventive Cardiology and is collaborator of the Prospective Physical Activity, Sitting and Sleep (PROPASS) consortium. In addition, she has been invited for several lectures at international congresses and received several (young investigator) awards. 

Her work has also been recognized by social media and society, in which she provided interviews for national radio stations (e.g. Radio 538, FunX), newspapers (e.g. de Gelderlander, AD) and magazines (NewScientist). Furthermore, she presented her work for the public during for example the Open Sciences Days and the EU Researchers Night. 

Education

• Registered as Epidemiologist B, Dutch Association of Epidemiology
• Dual PhD degree in Medical Sciences, Radboud University (NL), and Liverpool John Moores University (UK)
• Artificial Intelligence for Health, Radboudumc & Jheronimus Academy of Data Science
• Master Biomedical Sciences, Radboud University (NL). Major: Epidemiology.
• Bachelor Biomedical Sciences, Radboud University (NL).

Personal prizes & awards

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship, European Commision
• Young investigator award 2023, Secondary prevention and cardiac rehabilitation, European Association of Preventive Cardiology
• Young investigator award 2022, Population Science and Public Health, European Association of Preventive Cardiology.
• Christine Mohrmann Stipendium 2019, Radboud University

Expertise

• Epidemiology
• Data Science
• Cardiovascular health
• Exercise
• Physical activity
• Sedentary behavior
• Cardiac rehabilitation