Jan A. M. Smeitink - Biography#

Jan Smeitink obtained his training in Pediatrics and completed his training in the field of Inborn Errors of Metabolism. Since 1996 he is Head of the Department of Metabolic and Endocrine Disorders at the Radboud Univerity Nijmegen Medical Centre with a special interest in the study of mitochondria in health and disease. In 1996 he initiated the Nijmegen Centre for Mitochondrial Disorders (http://www.ncmd.nl). He has collaborated in many national and international research programs, and has published >300 scientific articles. He has been invited to give more than 100 lectures, including key-lectures like the 2012 Richard Frey Lecture at the LC-MS Montreux International Conference, and seminars all over the world and has organized key meetings and courses on mitochondrial medicine that significantly contribute to the now continuing success of the field (Euromit conferences, Frontiers in Bioenergetics, Systems Biology of Bioenergetics, focused courses on Mitochondrial Medicine).

Smeitink received the Prinses Beatrix Foundation Jubilee Award (2006) for his research on mitochondrial medicine and an Honorary Membership of the Pediatric Neurology association of Hong Kong (2011). He has given numerous interviews to (inter)national newspapers, radio stations and television. Since 2008 he is Director of the Institute of Genetic and Metabolic Disease (www.igmd.nl) one of the leading research institutes of the RUN-MC. Since 2010 he is chairman of the Centre for Systems Biology and Bioenergetics. Besides, he has an appointment as foreign adjunct professor at the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. Prof. Dr. Smeitink has obtained several major grants, and was the coordinator of the 6th Framework Program EUMITOCOMBAT (2004- 2008) funded by the European Commission. Three of his former students have become full professor at international institutes. 
Jan Smeitink has extensive collaborations with many mitochondrial patient organisations and researchers from all over the world. Jan Smeitink founded a successful biopharmaceutical company, Khondrion (http://www.khondrion.com), which currently holds 15 employees.