Dr. ir. Huub Hoefsloot

Huub C.J. Hoefsloot holds an MSc in Applied Mathematics (1987) and a PhD in Chemical Engineering / Numerical Mathematics (1992) both at the university of Groningen (The Netherlands). In 1991, he started as an assistant professor at the Universiteit van Amsterdam; his main research area is building and validating (dynamical) models of complex processes. In 2000 he became associate professor and in 2002 he joined the Biosystems Data Analysis group headed by Age Smilde. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers on simulations and data analysis in the fields of chemistry, physics, engineering and life sciences.

One of his current research interests is on incorporating existing knowledge into multivariate data analysis tools. The most tools in multivariate data analysis do not use any prior knowledge of the processes that are modeled; these are the so-called black box models. The (biological) processes that are studied are too complicated to build a model from first principles (white models). Incorporating knowledge into black models leads to grey models. A grey model should reveal phenomena that lead to a better understanding of the process at hand.

Another focus is on the analysis of time series experiments in proteomics/metabolomics and statistical validation procedures for this type of data analysis. When using the dynamical properties of this type of data it is possible to obtain better results from a statistical analysis when compared to conventional methods.