The School of Basic Medical Sciences (BMS) has been making major strides to contribute to the international strategy of Zhejiang University. In the year of 2015, BMS has started the “ZJU-UoE Institute” in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, which is aimed at promoting international cooperative education and school-running. BMS has furthermore successfully recruited two outstanding foreign full-time faculty members, Dr Stijn van der Veen and Dr Dante Neculai, both of them took up their positions in 2014. In order to speed-up the international development of BMS and to stimulate the recruitment of international faculty, postdocs and students, BMS decided to appoint Prof. Stijn van der Veen as assistant dean of BMS. In his position as assistant dean, Prof. Stijn will be mainly responsible for foreign affairs and international recruitment. This appointment is the latest of many measurements BMS has taken to respond to the international strategy of Zhejiang University.

Prof. Stijn performed his PhD and post-doc in microbiology at Wageningen University in The Netherlands, and afterwards has worked for three years as a research associate at the University of Oxford. He has successfully published his research in many leading international primary research journals, such as PLOS Pathogens and PNAS. Since joining BMS in June 2014, Prof. Stijn, who is known for his cheerful and open personality, has successfully obtained National and Provincial research funds, built-up his research team and published in international primary research journals. He has furthermore been elected to “The Recruitment Program of Global Experts” of Zhejiang Province in 2015.

Prof. Stijn says the research culture at BMS is very international, and therefore he feels very much at home. In addition, as the first international faculty recruited to BMS he feels it is one of his primary responsibilities to contribute to the further internationalization of BMS, and therefore he is very happy to take up his new position. In the end, Prof. Stijn hopes that more international faculty will join BMS to further develop it as an international first-class medical school.

Prof.Stijn van der Veen