Affiliation: Amsterdam UMC, Department of Physiology

Jolanda van der Velden, PhD, is chair of the Department for Physiology at the Amsterdam University Medical Center and director of the Amsterdam Cardiovascular Sciences Institute.

The main research interest of the van der Velden group is to study the role of sarcomeric proteins in cardiac performance. As mutations in sarcomeric proteins are a frequent cause of heart disease, research on inherited cardiomyopathies is a central research line in Amsterdam. Experiments are performed from the bench to the clinic. Expertise includes functional studies at single cardiac muscle and multicellular levels and mitochondrial studies in patient samples obtained during cardiac surgery and stem cell-derived heart models. Close collaboration with clinical departments allows translational research in which the functional studies in cardiac samples are combined within vivo parameters of cardiac pump function and energetics.