I am Head of Studies Sciences at the Amsterdam University College (AUC). In this position I am responsible for the development, implementation and management of the Sciences curriculum at the AUC. I am also involved in teaching. For more information on AUC please visit our webpage.

I obtained a PhD in Bioinformatics and Theoretical Biology in 1994 from Utrecht University. Subsequently, I was a post-doctoral fellow at Oxford University until 1997, after which I moved back to the Netherlands to become a Royal Netherlands Academy for Arts and Sciences fellow. Since 2005 I was Assistant Professor in Population Biology and Theoretical Ecology at the University of Amsterdam, and since 2009 I have been Programme Director of the Bachelor Biology. 

My research interests are broad, including the origin of life, the dynamics of infectious diseases, the evolution of cooperative behaviour, and the consequences of spatial self-organization and collective behaviour.

• Boerlijst, M.C. & P. Hogeweg (1991) "Spiral wave structures in pre-biotic evolution: hypercycles stable against parasites", Physica D 48: 17-28.
• Boerlijst, M.C. & P. Hogeweg (1991) "Self-structuring and selection.", In: Artificial Life II (eds. C.G. Langton, C. Taylor, J.D. Farmer & S. Rasmussen), pp. 255-276. Redwood City, CA: Addison-Wesley.
• Tinbergen, J.M.. & M.C. Boerlijst (1991) "nestling weight and survival in individual Great Tits", J. Anim. Ecol. 59, 1113-1127.
• Van der Laan, J.D. & M.C. Boerlijst (1992) "Cellular automata with non-uniform rules: an illustration of Kauffman's Boolean network theory.", In: 1991 Lectures in complex systems (eds. L. Nadel & D.L. Stein), pp. 431-439. Redwood City, CA: Addison-Wesley.
• Boerlijst, M.C., Lamers, M.E., & P. Hogeweg (1993) "Evolutionary consequences of spiral waves in a host-parasitoid system." Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 253, 15-18.
• De Boer, R.J. & M.C. Boerlijst (1994) "Diversity and virulence thresholds in AIDS", Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 91: 544-548.
• De Boer, R.J. & M.C. Boerlijst (1994) "Virulence and diversity thresholds in AIDS" In: Models for infectious human diseases (Isham, V. & G. Medley Eds.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Boerlijst, M.C. (1994) "Selfstructuring: a substrate for evolution" PhD-thesis, Theoretical Biology, University of Utrecht.
• Boerlijst, M.C. & P. Hogeweg (1995) "Spatial gradients enhance persistence of hypercycles", Physica D 88: 29-39.
• Boerlijst, M.C. & P. Hogeweg (1995) "Attractors and spatial patterns in hypercycles with negative interactions", J. Theor. Biol. 176, 199-210.
• Bonhoeffer, S., Herz, A.V.M, Boerlijst, M.C, Nee, S., Nowak, M.A. & R.M. May (1996) Simple explanation for ``linguistic features'' in junk DNA (letter), Science 271, 14-15.
• De Boer, R.J., Boerlijst, M.C., Sulzer, B. & A.S. Perelson (1996) "A new bell-shaped function for idiotypic interactions based upon crosslinking", Bull. Math. Biol. 58 , 285-312.
• Bonhoeffer, S., Herz, A.V.M., Boerlijst, M.C., Nee, S., Nowak, M.A. & R.M. May (1996) "No signs of hidden language in noncoding DNA", Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 1977.
• Boerlijst, M.C., Bonhoeffer, S. & M.A. Nowak (1996) "Viral Quasi-Species and Recombination", Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B , 263, 1577-1584.
• Nowak, M.A., Anderson, R.M., Boerlijst, M.C., Bonhoeffer, S. & R.M. May (1996) "HIV-1 evolution and disease progression", Science , 274, 1008-1010.
• Cooke, J., Nowak, M.A., Boerlijst, M.C & J. Maynard Smith (1997) "Evolutionary origins and maintenance of redundant gene expression during metazoan development", Trends Genet. 13, 360-364.
• Boerlijst, M.C., Nowak, M.A. & K. Sigmund (1997) "The Logic of Contrition", J. Theor. Biol. 185, 281-293.
• Boerlijst, M.C., Nowak, M.A. & K. Sigmund (1997) "Equal Pay for all Prisoners", Am. Math. Soc. Monthly 104, 303-317.
• Nowak, M.A., Boerlijst, M.C., Cooke, J. & J. Maynard Smith (1997) "Evolution of genetic redundancy", Nature 388, 167-171.
• Boerlijst, M.C. (2000) "Spirals and spots: Novel evolutionary phenomena through spatial self-structuring", in: The Geometry of Ecological Interactions: Simplifying Spatial Complexity, eds. U. Dieckmann, R. Law & H. Metz, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 171-182.
• Goudsmit,J., Weverling, G.J., van der Hoek, L., de Ronde, A., Miedema, F., Coutinho, R.A., Lange, J.M.A., & M.C. Boerlijst (2001) "Temporal changes in the carriage rate of AZT-resistant HIV-1: The impact of failing therapy versus secondary transmission of resistant strains", AIDS 15, 2293-2301.
• Johnson, C.R. & M.C. Boerlijst (2002) "Selection at the level of the community: the importance of spatial structure", Trends Ecol. Evol. 17, 83-90.
• Rietkerk, M., Boerlijst, M.C., van Langevelde, F.,  HilleRisLambers, D. , van der Koppel, J., Kumar, L. Prins, H.H.T. & A.M. de Roos (2002), "Self-Organization of Vegetation in Arid Ecosystems", Am. Nat. 160, 524-530.
• van Ballegooijen, W.M., Bogaards, J.A., Weverling, G.J., Boerlijst, M.C. & J. Goudsmit (2003) " AIDS vaccines that allow HIV-1 to infect and escape immunological control: a mathematical analysis of mass-vaccination", jAIDS 34, 214-220.
• Van Opijnen, T., Jeeninga, R.E., Boerlijst, M.C., Pollakis, G.P, Zetterberg, V., Salminien, M & B. Berkhout (2004) “Human Immunodeficiency Virus type 1 subtypes have a distinct Long Terminal Repeat that determines the replication rate in a host-cell specific manner”, J. Virol. 78, 3675-3683.
• M.C. Boerlijst* & van Ballegooijen W.M.* (2004) “Emergent trade-offs and selection for outbreak frequency in spatial epidemics”, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 101: 18246-18250. (* joint first athors)
• Bogaards, J.A., van Ballegooijen, W.M., Weverling, G.J., Boerlijst, M.C. & J. Goudsmit (2005) "Is population-level perversity a likely outcome of mass vaccination against HIV?”, the Lancet Inf. Dis. 5, 254.
• van Opijnen, T., Boerlijst M.C., B. Berkhout (2006) “Effects of random mutations in the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 transcriptional promoter on viral fitness in different host cell environments”,  J. Virol. 80, 6678-6685.
• Korthals Altes, H., de Boer, R.J. & Boerlijst MC. (2006) “Role of avidity and breadth of the CD4 T cell response in progression to AIDS” Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B , 273 1697-1704
• Boerlijst, M.C. (2006) “Cellular Automaton Modeling of Pattern Formation” Mathematical Biosciences 200, 118-123
• van Opijnen, T., de Ronde, A., Boerlijst M.C., B. Berkhout (2007) “Adaptation of HIV-1 Depends on the Host-Cell Environment”,  PloS One 2, e271.
• Bezemer D., de Wolf, F., Boerlijst M.C., van Sighem, A.; Hollingsworth, T. D., Prins, M., Geskus, R.B., Gras L., Coutinho, R. A. & C. Fraser (2008) “A resurgent HIV-1 epidemic among men who have sex with men in the era of potent antiretroviral therapy” AIDS 22, 1071-1078.
• Bezemer D., F. de Wolf, M. C. Boerlijst, A. van Sighem, T. D. Hollingsworth & C. Fraser. (2010) “27 years of the HIV epidemic amongst men having sex with men in the Netherlands” Epidemics 2 (2), 66-79.
• Bezemer D., van Sighem, A., V.V. Lukashov, L. van der Hoek^, N. Back, R. Schuurman, C. A.B. Boucher, E. C.J. Claas, Boerlijst M.C., Coutinho, R. A. & de Wolf, F. (2010). Transmission networks of HIV-1 among men having sex with men in the Netherlands. AIDS, 24(2), 271-282.
• Boerlijst, M. C., & van Ballegooijen, W. M. (2010). Spatial pattern switching enables cyclic evolution in spatial epidemics. PLoS Computational Biology, 6(12), e1001030.
• Boerlijst, M. C., Oudman, T., & de Roos, A. M. (2013). Catastrophic collapse can occur without early warning: Examples of silent catastrophes in structured ecological models. PLoS One, 8(4), e62033. 
• Boerlijst, M. C., & de Roos, A. M. (2015). Competition and facilitation between a disease and a predator in a stunted prey population. PLoS One, 10(7)