Albert Hofman named new chair of Epidemiology Department

Albert Hofman has been named the Stephen B. Kay Family Professor of Public Health and Clinical Epidemiology and Chair of the Department of Epidemiology  at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, effective July 1. Hofman comes to Harvard from the Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, Netherlands, where he was Professor of Epidemiology and Chair of the Department of Epidemiology.

Hofman is an internationally recognized scientific leader in the epidemiology of common neurologic and vascular diseases, in particular dementia and stroke. He was the initiator of pioneering studies on the role of vascular factors in the etiology of Alzheimer disease and a leader in initiating genetic studies of complex diseases in large populations. Hofman was instrumental in founding the genetic epidemiologic laboratory in the Erasmus Epidemiology Department in the late 1980s. In addition, he has a wealth of expertise and a background in extensive leadership and administrative experience, having been chair of a large Epidemiology Department for over 20 years. Since 1990, Hofman’s work has been based in the original Rotterdam cohort studies that he initiated, as well as the Generation R cohort studies that were later introduced in 2002. Hofman’s work is notable for the timely application of advanced technologies, such as MRI imaging and genomics, to population-wide observational epidemiologic studies bearing on important clinical entities. Hofman’s record of investigation is extraordinary in both quality and quantity, and it also directly reflects outstanding scientific leadership and program development, affording scores of younger investigators and collaborators the opportunity to craft productive scientific careers.