Curriculum Vitae
November 2023
Leiden University
Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR)
Medicinal Chemistry, Einsteinweg 55
2333 CC, Leiden, Telephone: +3171 527 3511
Email: You can probably find it
Keywords: computational chemist, modeling, polypharmacology, big data
scientific presenting, scientific writing, linux administration
Scientific and personal interests
· Predictive polypharmacology, Artificial Inteligence, cheminformatics, bioinformatics, text mining, interdisciplinary research, big data, high performance / GPU computing, visualization
· Computer geek (likes tinkering with hardware and networks), ZFS, open fire cooking, likes driving / road tripping
Skill set
· Statistical modeling, big data analysis, visualization & dimensionality reduction, workflow tools, scripting in several languages, structure based modeling, SQL, high performance computing
Scientific Publications
· 117 Peer-reviewed publications (h-index 35, average citations per paper 47), multiple talks and poster presentations at scientific meetings (see www.gjpvanwesten.nl).
Current Positions
· Full Professor 05/2020– Present
o Artificial Intelligence & Medicinal Chemistry
· Founder of Getuyg Data Analytics 07/2015 – Present
o Data science and storage consultancy
Previous Positions
· Assistant Professor (Tenure Track, Drug & Target Discovery Cluster) 10/2016 – 05/2020
o Computational Chemical Biology
· Senior Postdoc Medicinal Chemistry (LACDR) 05/2015 – 09/2016
o Fellowship at Science Faculty (LACDR & LIACS)
· Senior Postdoc ChEMBL group 11/2013 – 05/2015
o EMBL Interdisciplinary POstDoc (EIPOD) fellowship
· Guest Scientist Leiden University (LACDR) 09/2014 – 05/2015
· Guest Scientist University of Cambridge 08/2014 – 08/2014
· Guest Lecturer University of Strathclyde (Glasgow) 12/2013 – 12/2014
· Postdoctoral fellow ChEMBL group 05/2012 – 11/2013
o EMBL Interdisciplinary POstDoc (EIPOD) fellowship
Consultancy work
· CULGI (chemical modeling company, Leiden, Netherlands)
· Stage Pharma (biotech startup, Utrecht, Netherlands)
o Generation of polypharmacological predictive models (aminergic GPCRs)
· Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceuticals (Beerse, Belgium)
o Predictive polypharmacological models in discovery
Education
· Ph.D. in Proteochemometrics (polypharmacology modeling) 11/2007 – 01/2013
Leiden Academic Center for Drug Research (Leiden University, The Netherlands)
o Predictive computational models using ligand and protein similarity simultaneously (Proteochemometrics, Ph.D. position was funded by Janssen Pharmaceutica (Johnson and Johnson Pharmaceuticals)
· M.Sc. Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences 09/2001 – 09/2007
Leiden University (Leiden, The Netherlands) with the following research projects:
o Characterizing the inhibition of P-Selectin by GA-GWVDV (36 weeks, molecular biology; department of Bio-Pharmaceutics of the LACDR)
o Characterizing HIV-1 Reverse Transcriptase Non-Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor Resistance (24 weeks, chem-informatics, department of Chem-informatics and Modeling of Tibotec / Janssen Pharmaceutica Belgium)
Supervision and Teaching
· Chem and Bioinformatics in Computational biomedical and drug research.
· Portfolio assignment in Design and Synthesis.
· Cheminformatics in Minor ‘Modern Drug Discovery’.
· Designed practical course “Computational Drug Design”, 10-day course on the fundamentals of computational drug design (given twice to 20 students).
· Supervision of 2 Postdocs, 2 PhD Student, > 10 M.Sc. students, and > 10 B.Sc. students
Reviewing Activities
· Ad hoc referee for the following peer reviewed journals: ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters. Bioinformatics, Journal of Structural Biology, Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, Journal of Chemical Information & Modeling, Journal of Cheminformatics, Molecular Informatics, Nature Methods
· 2015 EIPOD interviews (external expert)
Management & organization
• Served 1 year as postdoc representative at EBI. Duties included liaising between postdocs and EBI or EMBL faculty, feedback with regard to the training program, organizing symposia and lunch-meetings, inviting external speakers.
• Member of organizing committee for EMBL postdoc retreat. Bi-annual 3 day event, 2 days scientific program and 1 afternoon of social program. Attended by approximately 80 international postdocs from EMBL outstations in Heidelberg, Grenoble, Hamburg, Hinxton, and Monterotondo. Additionally, the committee hosted a number of external speakers from academia, industry, and academic publishing.
• Founder of Camball annual classic rally (2012 – Present)
• Crew at checkpoint Amsterdam for Gumball 3000 rally (2010 – 2015)
• Served a year on the Science Club committee, in charge of the faculty café that provides a venue for symposia, discussion, and hosting of weekly science faculty drinks on Thursday
• Served a year as president of L.P.S.V. ,,Aesculapius” , student association [1]
[1]Was a member of various committees including: Dies Natalis Committee, Freshmen Weekend Committee, Yearbook Committee and Internet Committee during membership of the L.P.S.V. „Aesculapius”