Martin van den Berg

BIOGRAPHY

ACADEMIC POSITION:
Professor Dr Martin van den Berg is Professor in Toxicology, deputy director of the Institute of Risk Assessment Sciences (formerly RITOX) of the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands and head of the Toxicology and Pharmacology Division of IRAS. On average his IRAS division consists of 2 full professors, 3 adjunct professors, two associate professors, three assistant professor, 20-25 PhD students and ca. 10 technicians, annually. His teaching responsibilities are in the area of Toxicology and Environmental Chemistry at both undergraduate and postgraduate level at the Faculties of Veterinary Medicine, Medical Biology, Biology and Environmental Sciences. He is also appointed as an honorary professor in environmental toxicology at the University of Queensland (Brisbane) and an adjunct professor at the Asean Institute of Technology/Royal Chulabohorn Research Institute in Bangkok.

EDUCATION:
He is a graduate of the University of Amsterdam (Supervisor Professor Dr Otto Hutzinger, 1986) with an MSc and a PhD in Environmental and Toxicological Chemistry. Professor Van den Berg is a European registered toxicologist.

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES:
Professor van den Berg is connected to several national and international organizations which are involved with the (eco)toxicological risk assessment of dioxins, PCBs and other persistent organohalogen compounds. He is an appointed member of the Health Council of The Netherlands and chaired and served on several of its committees. He is also director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research on Environmental Health Risk Assessment, which is based at IRAS (Utrecht University) and a collaboration with the Dutch National Institute of Public Health and Environmental Protection (RIVM, Bilthoven). During the last five years he has been acting as an advisor on many WHO, EU and US committees that are dealing with the (environmental) health effects of dioxins, PCBs and endocrine disruptors or the use of bioassays for rapid screening techniques.

Professor van den Berg is a member of the Society of Toxicology (US) and Dutch Society of Toxicology. Within the Dutch Society of Toxicology he has been a member of the registration committee for toxicologists for seven years and in 2010 he was elected president of the society. In the past he has also been editor of Chemosphere Environmental Toxicology and Risk Assessment Section and has been a member of the editorial boards of Toxicological Sciences and Environmental and Toxicological Chemistry. Presently he is Associate Editor of Toxicological Sciences and Environmental Health Perspectives. From 2004-2007 he served as the only European member of the program committee of the Society of Toxicology in the US. In 2008 he was appointed to the Committee of a Appeal from the Board of Authorisation of Plant Protection Products and Biocidal Products.

HONORS AND AWARDS:
In autumn 2006 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Umea, Sweden for his research on dioxinlike compounds. In 2011 his H-Index was 36. In the period 2010-12 he will be president of the Dutch Society of Toxicology.

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Professor van den Berg's current areas of research include: toxicokinetics, metabolism and reproductive and interactive effects of halogenated polyaromatics, interactions of xenobiotics and phytochemicals on steroid hormone synthesis, metabolism and their relation with hormone dependent tumors, development of in vitro assays to detect endocrine disruptors. These studies are done with mammals, birds and fish as well as in in vitro systems. The results of his scientific work and that of his research group have been published in more than 250 scientific articles and papers.

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