Zeegers will lead CAPHRI through a challenging period and will play an important role in strengthening the School in terms of its finance, productivity and strategy. Maurice is known for his ability to connect disciplines, organisational units and build strong international collaborations. He has a passion for health research that he shares with both CAPHRI and Maastricht University Medical Center+.

With 300 employees, CAPHRI is the largest School of the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences. CAPHRI provides high quality multidisciplinary research and teaching aimed at the improvement of the individual’s quality of life and population’s health through responsible innovation in public health and health care. CAPHRI uses social relevance as its starting point and aims to directly influence the guidelines and standards within the present health care system and public health. CAPHRI’s research is organised in six research programmes. In each programme, senior investigators, postdocs, PhD candidates and support staff work closely together on related multidisciplinary research projects.

Zeegers studied health education, epidemiology and genetic epidemiology in Rotterdam and Maastricht, where he obtained a PhD in 2001. In 2006 he was promoted to professor at University of Birmingham. He returned to Maastricht in 2012 as professor of Complex Genetics and Epidemiology. He currently operates as head of the department of Complex Genetics within the Cluster of Genetics and Cell Biology and member of the NUTRIM management team. Zeegers is also the president of the Netherlands society of epidemiology and vice-president of the European epidemiology federation. With the start of his directorship he will stop his management responsibilities in NUTRIM and the Netherlands society of epidemiology.