Marion Koopmans

Prof. Marion Koopmans is professor of Virology in the Department of Viroscience at Erasmus Medical Centre in The Netherlands, director of the WHO collaborating centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases, scientific director for Emerging Infectious Diseases of the Netherlands Centre for One Health (NCOH) and scientific director of the Pandemic and Disaster Preparedness Centre (PDPC) in Rotterdam/Delft The Netherlands.
Her research focuses on emerging infections with special emphasis on unravelling pathways of disease emergence and spread at the human animal interface. Creating global networks to develop risk based innovative early warning surveillance in a One Health context is central to her career, currently including DURABLE, an EU funded network of centres of excellence for emerging infectious disease research preparedness. In 2021, Koopmans founded the Pandemic and Disaster Preparedness Centre PDPC, a research centre with a focus on the occurrence and prevention of pandemics and climate-related disasters, combining expertise from technical, bio-medical, environmental and social sciences.
She has served on national and international (EU, WHO) advisory boards on epidemic and pandemic preparedness and response, including the Outbreak Management Team that advised the national government on measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. She sees science communication as an important responsibility of scientists all over the world.