prof. dr. Maroeska Rovers PhD

About Maroeska Rovers

Prof.dr. Maroeska Rovers is professor of Medical Technology and Innovation at the Radboudumc, scientific director of the Technical Medical (TechMed) Centre at the University of Twente, director of Health Innovation Netherlands, and a member of several international boards, such as the scientific committee of Excite international, the IDEAL collaboration, and the Science and Innovation Panel of the EU IHI program. She also is a member the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

She is a passionate researcher with a strong societal impact as her aim is to contribute to the development of effective, affordable and valuable innovations. Her research has been characterized as visionary, innovative, international, and highly productive. In her research, she combines methods and discoveries from various disciplines, such as surgery, epidemiology, health technology assessment, biomedical sciences and policy to make beyond state-of-the-art progress, and then translate these insights into practical tools.

Since the methodology is leading, she is involved in various technological areas, varying from e-health to AI and robotics to implants. Her international (multi-center) projects have shown that she can bring together the joint efforts of internationally leading experts to further develop worldwide innovations. She also has ample experience with the scientific co-ordination of clinical studies, and these studies have demonstrated real impact through the uptake of published findings in international clinical guidelines and by practitioners and methodologists. 

Her innovative research line receives a lot of media attention on TV, radio and in newspapers. She has also received various prizes and grants for her work, including a personal VENI and VICI grant and the Radboud Science Award, which enables researchers to process their scientific breakthroughs into teaching materials for primary school.

Personal prizes & awards

• 2018: Awarded VICI-grant entitled “Towards early evaluation of surgical innovations using an integrated approach (SURGE)”
• 2016: Awarded TOP-proposal entitled “Promoting tailored healthcare: improving methods to investigate subgroup effects in treatment response when having multiple individual participant datasets”
• 2011: Hypatia tenure track fellowship Radboudumc, awarded to the 10 most talented researchers of the Radboudumc
• 2011: Prize for the best applicable clinical paper in Pediatrics by the Maarten Kappelle Foundation
• 2008: Elisabeth von Freyburg award every 2 year to the most promising young researcher of the University Medical Center Utrecht
• 2008: Prize for the best applicable ENT paper in 2007/2008 by the foundation KNOhow
• 2007: Steyn Parvé personal development award of the UMC Utrecht, which is intended to stimulate talented female researchers in reaching academic top positions
• 2005: Prize for the best methodology paper in the International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care in 2004
• 2003: Prestigious Dutch VENI grant for young promising researchers (awarded to top 10%)
• 2003: Prize for the best audiological thesis over the period 1999-2002, ATZE Spoor Foundation

Additional Functions

• Scientific Director of TechMed Centre, University of Twente (since 1 September 2022)
• Director Health Innovations Netherlands (HI-NL) (since 29 January 2020)
• Supervisory board member Graafschapcollege (since 9 March 2021)
• Member of the Science and Innovation Panel (SIP) of the EU IHI program (since 25 March 2022)
• Board member of Health Valley (since 1 september 2022)
• Board member of the Interdisciplinary Consortium for clinical Movement Sciences & technology (ICMS) (since 2 January 2023)
• Board member of the ENT EBM foundation (since 1February 2023)
• International Scientific Collaboration Excite International; to guide medical-technological innovations for the healthcare system by facilitating global teamwork and partnerships (from 2016)
• Research lead of the worldwide IDEAL collaboration, an initiative to improve the quality of research in surgery (from 2014)
• Chair of the ZONMw VIDI committee (since 2022)
• Member of the ZONMw HTA program committee (since 2021)