Personal information
Allard van der Beek was born in 1964 in Delft, the Netherlands. He obtained his MSc degree at the Faculty of Human Movement Sciences (VU University Amsterdam). He worked for the Study Center on Work and Health of the University of Amsterdam on different projects regarding adverse health effects related to physical workload and work stress. He obtained his PhD degree on the thesis entitled ‘Assessment of workload in lorry drivers’. After his move to the Coronel Institute for Occupational and Environmental Health (Academic Medical Center / University of Amsterdam) he was, among others, the principal investigator in a national programming study on priorities in occupational health research. After a couple of years at the Department of Public Health (Erasmus University Rotterdam), he moved back to Amsterdam. This time to the Department of Public and Occupational Health, which is part of the EMGO Institute at the VU University Medical Center. Since March 2007 he holds a tenured position as Professor of Occupational Epidemiology and he is vice head the Department of Public and Occupational Health.Within occupational epidemiology his main research topics have been exposure assessment, etiology of work-related musculoskeletal disorders and work stress, and (cost-)effectiveness of interventions. Now, his research activities mainly consist of the supervision of PhD students. Since 2002 he is coordinator of Body@Work, Research Center Physical Activity, Work and Health, TNO VUmc. Since 2005 he is also coordinator of the Research Center for Health Insurance Medicine AMC-UWV-VUmc, of which he is chair as of 2008. In addition, he has been involved in several boards and committees. Examples are: President of the Board of the Netherlands Society of Human Movement Sciences (VvBN), Member of the Editorial Board of Eur J Appl Physiol, Member of the International Advisory Board of Scand J Work Environ Health, Member of the Scientific Committees ‘Musculoskeletal Disorders’ and ‘Epidemiology’ of the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH), Member of the Technical Committees ‘Musculoskeletal Disorders’ and 'Gender and Work' of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA), and Member of the European Union COST B13 Working Group on Prevention of Low Back Pain. Finally, he was Principal organiser and treasurer of the 4th International Scientific Conference ‘PREMUS 2001’, and was Member of the Supervisory Board and treasurer of the 16th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association ‘IEA 2006’.
Allard van der Beek is (co-)author of almost 100 scientific papers published in peer-reviewed international journals. He supervised 8 reseachers who successfully defended their PhD thesis, and is supervising another 14 PhD students now.