dr. M.N. (Machteld) Hylkema

Dr. Machteld N. Hylkema is an Associate Professor at the Department of Pathology and Medical Biology at the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), in Groningen, The Netherlands. She earned her Master's degree in Biology from the University of Leiden in 1991 and completed her PhD thesis, titled “Autoimmunity against Nucleosomes in Lupus Nephritis,” at the University of Amsterdam in 1995. That same year, she relocated to Groningen for a postdoctoral position in the Department of Cell Biology and Histology at the University of Groningen. In 1998, she pursued postdoctoral research at Stanford University in Palo Alto, USA. Upon her return to Groningen, she continued her postdoctoral work in the Department of Pathology and Medical Biology at the UMCG and was promoted to Assistant Professor in 2003. In 2014, she was appointed Associate Professor.

 As a medical biologist, Dr. Hylkema has a broad research interest in the early life origins and pathogenesis of obstructive lung diseases. She has developed experimental mouse models to study the effects of maternal smoking during pregnancy on prenatal programming and susceptibility to asthma and COPD. Her current research focuses on the role of extracellualar vesicles in abnormal behavior of lung progenitor/stem cells that contributes to emphysema progression and impaired lung tissue repair in COPD. She has secured over €2.5 million in research grants from national and European agencies, as well as from pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Hylkema is a member of the review panel of the Swedish Research Council for Medicine and Health and has extensive experience as a coordinator, teacher, and mentor in various BSc, MSc, and PhD courses on immunology and translational research.She is co-author of over 110 peer reviewed publications and is member of the editorial board of The American Journal of Physiology-Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology since 2012. Since March 2018, she has served as the Academic Director of the Erasmus+ International Master in Innovative Medicine (IMIM) program, for which she and her consortium secured EU grants in 2019, and 2024.