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”