Dr. van den Akker is a Principal Investigator in the Biochemistry Department at Case Western Reserve University. His lab has received funding from NIH and industry, he is a frequent NIH study section member, he has consulted for two pharmaceutical companies, is an academic advisor for the Biochemistry major, is director for the Biochemistry Research Honors Track, and teaches in medical school and two courses (BIOC 334/434 and BIOC 501). He recently co-founded the non-profit Knowledge Advances Inc. which launched the educational app Advance: Life training. This free app aims to educate users about science and other fact-generating sources and processes to help them navigate the information and misinformation ecosystem.
Dr. Focco van den Akker received his M.Sc. degree in Molecular Sciences from the University of Wageningen (Netherlands) in 1993. He did his Ph.D. training at the University of Washington (with Dr. Wim Hol on heat-labile enterotoxins and a novel protein crystal structure validation method). After completing his Ph.D. in 1997, he did a postdoctoral stint in the lab of Dr. George Stark at the Cleveland Clinic. He started his own lab at the Cleveland Clinic in 2000 and joined the faculty of the Biochemistry Department of Case Western Reserve University in 2003.