Professor - Head Department of Immunology
Prof. Dr. Hermelijn Smits
Curriculum Vitae
Prof. Dr. Hermelijn Smits studied Biochemistry (BSc) at the Applied Science University of Rotterdam (1994) and did an MSc in Medical Biology at the University of Utrecht (1997). She obtained her PhD at the University of Amsterdam (2003) on the role of human dendritic cells and Th2 in allergic asthma (promoter Prof Martien Kapsenberg) and did post-docs in the groups of Prof Bart Lambrecht (VIB Ghent, Belgium) and Prof Maria Yazdanbakhsh (Parasitology, LUMC). Through funding from the Longfonds, NWO (Veni, Vidi, and Vici), and the EU, she established her research group on host-commensal interactions and immune modulation at the Dept of Parasitology from 2011 onwards and became a full professor in 2022. She has been the head of the Department of Immunology, LUMC, since 2025. She has been leading the international Dutch Lung Foundation consortium ‘A World Without Asthma’ (AWWA), which focuses on developing asthma prevention strategies through microbial-based strategies. She has been active in the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI) as a task force leader; she is one of the past presidents of the Netherlands Respiratory Society (NRS) and is currently the treasurer of the Dutch Society for Immunology (NVvI).
