Elly Hol - Biography#

Elly Hol is professor of “Glia biology of brain diseases” at the Utrecht University and professor of "Biology of glia and neural stem cells” at the University of Amsterdam. She leads a research group at the University Medical Center Utrecht Brain Center (www.ellyhollab.eu). Her research is focused on the role of glial cells in brain diseases. The overall aim is to elucidate the molecular and functional changes in glia that contribute to the pathogenesis of neurological and psychiatric diseases. Her work is translational and includes studies on glial cells in human post-mortem brain tissue, in human cell models, and in mouse models for brain diseases.

Elly was trained as a medical biologist with a specialization in molecular neurobiology. After her PhD in Utrecht, she obtained a Max-Planck Fellowship to work for 2 years at the Max-Planck-Institute for Psychiatry in Martinsried, Germany. In 1997, she started as a post-doc at the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research in Amsterdam, where she acquired substantial funding, including a fellowship of the Netherlands Brain foundation. Between 2003 and 2013 she headed the group “Astrocyte Biology & Neurodegeneration” at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience. As of 2013 she works as a principal investigator at the department of translational neuroscience, at the UMC Utrecht Brain Center. She is in the editorial board of Glia, chair of the scientific advisory board of Alzheimer Nederland, chair of GliaNed, member of the scientific advisory board of the Dutch brain foundation, director of the Neuroscience Master and PhD program of the Utrecht University Graduate School of Life Sciences, and director of education for the Division Brain at the UMCU. Her work is published in leading journals such as Nature communications, Brain, Molecular Psychiatry, Science, and Stem Cells Translational Medicine. She is regularly invited as a speaker at dedicated research conferences and at events for the general public.