Excerpts about our chair group from the recent (2009) external peer review of our research school VLAG:
| Scientific quality | 5 = excellent |
| Relevance | 5 = excellent |
| Vitality and feasibility | 5 = excellent |
The research mission (of the Nutrigenomics group) is shared with the overall Human Nutrition group but is focused on three research lines: the intestine as gatekeeper and regulator of systemic health; nutrient sensing; inflammation in obesity and obesity related disorders.
The research is well integrated both within VLAG and with NUTRIM as well as nationally and internationally with participation in several large scale EU-funded projects and networks (NUGO).
The leadership is strong and there is a coherent and focused vision.
This is a new group but has the highest Citation Index in VLAG and is rapidly developing a strong international reputation with significant publication in high impact academic journals.
The group is well equipped and has plans to update equipment and is exploring new technologies in this rapidly developing field. The group has been very successful in raising external funding.
This area is highly relevant to a number of calls for research examining diet and gene interactions and nutrigenomics. This is an area where the advancement of knowledge is very rapid. It will be some years before the fruits of such new knowledge can be implemented in terms of dietary advice.
This is a strong research group that is conducting groundbreaking research and with strong interactions in VLAG and NUTRIM and externally both in Europe and in the USA.
The expertise in this area is likely to become mainstream in nutrition research and this group will help maintain VLAG as a world class nutrition research institute which is unique within the Netherlands.