Knighthood and endowed chair for Cisca Wijmenga

Department Professor Cisca Wijmenga has been named a knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion, a royal honour given to those who have rendered extraordinary services of exceptional value to society. The honour was presented to Cisca by Groningen City Alderman Mattias Gijsbertsen at the close of the symposium on 19 September to celebrate the inauguration of the Lodewijk Sandkuil endowed chair.

This endowed chair was awarded to Cisca by the board of the University of Groningen in 2017. It is named in honour of Lodewijk Sandkuijl (1953-2002), who is regarded as one of founding fathers of statistical genetics. Lodewijk’s work was fundamental to the development of methods to unravel the role of inherited factors in complex disorders and traits, and it was Cisca's choice to name the chair after him.

You can read more about the knighthood and the endowed chair (in Dutch) here and here.