René van Donkelaar

René van Donkelaar studied Human Health Sciences at Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands) where he obtained his MSc in 1994. Subsequently, he was a PhD student at the Department of Movement Sciences of Maastricht University (UM, The Netherlands) under supervision of professors Maarten Drost (UM), Harm Kuipers (UM), and Jan Janssen (Eindhoven Unversity of Technology, TU/e, The Netherlands). He obtained his PhD in 1999 with his thesis 'Skeletal muscle mechanics, a numerical and experimental approach to spatial phenomena'. Since 1998, Van Donkelaar has been appointed at the TU/e Biomedical Engineering Department, where he was one of the first faculty members. He has worked at the groups of professors Frank Baaijens and Rik Huiskes, and since 2010 he was Associate Professor in Cartilage Mechanics at professor Keita Ito's group for Orthopaedic Biomechanics. Since July 2017 he is appointed Program Director of the Bachelor program and graduate school Biomedical Engineering. The latter includes Masters Biomedical Engineering and Medical Engineering. In this position, he is closely involved in the redesign of TU/e’s Bachelor College. Associated with that he runs the redesign of the departmental Bachelor program. The objective is to create a more coherent and enthusing program with more hands-on learning and CBL-oriented education, and significant attention to student personal and professional development, while keeping the theoretical content of the program at the highest level. He addresses this challenging and important task together with a motivated team of co-workers in the department.