Matthijs Verhage

Full Professor Head of department

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Profile image of Matthijs Verhage

Prof. dr. Matthijs Verhage obtained his PhD at the University of Amsterdam in 1990 (cum laude). He received post-doctoral training at the labs of prof. David G. Nicholls (Dundee, UK) and the recent Nobel laureate prof. Thomas C. Südhof (Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Dallas, USA).

Since 2000 he is full professor and head of the Department of Functional Genomics at the VU University Medical Center and a department of the same name at the Faculty of Life Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

In 2003 he became the first chairman of the Center for Neurogenomics and Cognitive Research (CNCR).

Since 2014, he is also affiliated with the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden (SUN project, 0.1fte).

Since 2015, he coordinates together with prof. A.B. Smit the SYNGO project in collaboration with the Broad Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, USA


Matthijs Verhage was co-founder and vice chair of the Dutch NeuroBsik Mouse Phenomics consortium, partner of the European research consortium EU-Synapse, vice chair of the consortia EuroSpin and SynSys and is founder and vice chair of the H2020 consortium COSYN.

He is chair/member of the scientific advisory/review boards of the Center for Psychiatry and Neuroscience (Descartes), in Paris, France; the graduate school Neurosciences in Göttingen, Germany; the European Neuroscience Institute in Göttingen, Germany; the IBS Center for Synaptic Brain Dysfunctions, Deajeon, Korea; the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology (VIB), Leuven, Belgium; and the CNC-IBILI in Coimbra, Portugal.
He is consultant/scientific advisor for Life Science companies in The Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and Japan.

In 2001 he was the Pionier/VICI laureate of the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).

In 2012 he received the ERC Ideas Advanced Grant of the European Research Council.

Some key papers of the last years:

  • Moro et al. (2021) Science Advances (in press, May 2021)
  • Van Westen et al (2021) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (in press, April 2021)
  • Verhage and Sørensen (2020) Neuron 107(1): 22-37.
  • Rajewsky et al. (2020) Nature 587(7834): 377-386.
  • Luo et al. (2020) Neuron 106(1): 37-65.
  • Lammertse et al. (2020) Brain 143(2): 441-451.
  • Persoon et al. (2019) Neuron 104(6):1065-1080.
  • Brouwer et al. (2019) EMBO J. 38(17): e101289.
  • Koopmans et al. (2019) Neuron 103(2): 217-234.
  • Persoon et al. (2018) EMBO J. e99672
  • Emperador-Melero et al. (2018) Nature Commun 9(1): 3421.
  • Kovacevic et al. (2018) Brain 141(5): 1350-1374.
  • Meijer et al. (2018) EMBO J. 37(2): 300-320.
  • He et al. (2017) Nature Commun 8: 15915.
  • de Jong et al. (2016) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 113(18): 5095-5100.
  • Aarts et al. (2016) Nature Neurosci 17(4): 491-496.
  • Li et al. (2013) Neuron 79(5): 970-986.
  • Ripke et al. (2013) Nature Genet 45(10): 1150-1159.
  • Heutink and Verhage (2012) Neuron 75(6): 935-938.
  • Toonen and M. Verhage (2011) Neuron 72(5): 679-681.
  • Groffen et al. (2010) Science 327(5973): 1614-1618
  • Mohrmann et al. (2010) Science 330(6003): 502-505.
  • de Wit et al. (2009) Cell 138(5): 935-946.
  • Verhage and van Meer (2009) Neuron 62(5): 603-605.
  • Gerber et al. (2008) Science 321(5895): 1507-1510.
  • Wierda et al (2008) Neuron 54(2): 275-290.