Dr. Matthijs S. Berends works as a medical epidemiologist/microbiologist the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) and Certe Foundation. He is an expert on microbial epidemiology and data science. With a background in Medical Biology, Medical Microbiology and Clinical Epidemiology, he wrote his PhD thesis “A New Instrument for Microbial Epidemiology” (DOI 10.33612/diss.177417131) on the development of a novel method for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) data analysis. This publicly available method is being used in 175 countries and was downloaded over 85,000 times. For this achievement, the University of Groningen rewarded him with the Open Research Award in 2021. The preprint about the method was in the ResearchGate top 10 weekly most read preprints ever and is according to Altmetrics in the 97^th percentile of most popular research ever measured. It was published in the Journal of Statistical Software (IF 22.1).

Dr. Berends’ research focusses on the possibilities and effects to work with microbiological data in novel ways, especially with regard to AMR, by using predictive modelling and machine learning. Additionally, for his current postdoc position at UMCG department of Primary Care Medicine, he develops machine learning models to predict acute and long COVID in primary care patients.

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=sAoHvIgAAAAJ