Developmental Molecular Mechanisms

BIOGRAPHY

ACADEMIC POSITION:
Senior Group Leader at the Hubrecht Institute

EDUCATION AND BACKGROUND:
Hendrik (Rik) Korswagen studied medical biology at the Utrecht University. He received his PhD (cum laude) from the University of Amsterdam in 1999, based on research performed in the group of Ronald Plasterk at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. For this work he received the 1997 Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Award. He continued his postdoctoral research in the group of Hans Clevers at the University Medical Center in Utrecht. In 2000 he became a junior (and in 2005 a senior) group leader at the Hubrecht Institute, studying the mechanism and regulation of Wnt signaling in C. elegans. He has received a junior fellowship from the Center for Biomedical Genetics and grants from the Dutch Cancer Society, the EU Sixth Framework Program and from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (including a Vidi career grant). From 1998 to 2002 he has been a co-organizer and instructor of the yearly C. elegans course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Dr Korswagen's group uses the nematode C. elegans to study two key questions:

• Mechanism of Wnt secretion
• Wnt signaling and cell migration