Rudi Westendorp

Rudi Westendorp (1959) is professor of Medicine at Old age at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at University of Copenhagen, Denmark (2015). He sits at the steering board of the interdisciplinary Center of Healthy Ageing exploring aging from cells to society. Trained at Leiden University, Netherlands he became a consultant in internal medicine and epidemiology and later dedicated himself into geriatrics and gerontology. He was full professor at the Leiden University Medical Center, and chair of the department of old age medicine (2000-2014). He was founding director of the privately funded Leyden Academy on Vitality and Ageing (2007-2014) that conducts research, provides education and pursues societal innovations to improve quality of life of older people. He acquainted ample national and European grants, published more than 600+ original articles with an h-index of 70+, and supervised over 50+ PhD students of which three of them have been appointed full professor. He published the bestseller ‘Growing older without feeling old’ that is translated in six languages. He was endowed doctor honoris causa by the University of Newcastle, UK (2009), and received a knighthood in the order of the Dutch Lion (2014).