Dr E. Th. van Bavel (b. 1960) has been appointed professor of Vascular Biophysics at the Faculty of Medicine of the Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA).

Ed van Bavel occupies himself with the question how blood vessels regulate their structure and function, and what goes wrong in doing so in syndromes such as high blood pressure and arterioscleroris. Physical forces are important in this respect and by combining physical research with methods from molecular biology, physiology and anatomy Van Bavel is hoping to gain better insight into the origin of vascular diseases. The work is carried out by a multidisplinary research team from the department of Medical Physics and is supported by among others the Nederlandse Hartstichting (Netherlands Heart Foundation). Van Bavel will remain actively involved in education both within Medicine and within the master’s programme in Biomedical Physics.

Van Bavel has been working at the department of Medical Physics of the Academic Medical Centre (AMC-UvA) since 1989, and as senior university lecturer since 2002. He was visiting researcher at Aarhus University in Denmark in 1991, and he is furthermore, among other things, president of the European Society for Microcirculation. He is also a member of the editorial board of Journal of Vascular Research and of American Journal of Physiology.