Gert van Valkenhoef

Personal Information

G.H.M. (Gert) van Valkenhoef
Address: Groningen, The Netherlands (details on request)
E-mail: g.h.m.van.valkenhoef [at] rug [dot] nl
Phone: (on request)

Date of Birth: 1985-07-25
Citizenship: Dutch
Sex: Male

Work Experience

Software development

• IT development manager (Jun 2016 - current) at the Cochrane Collaboration.
• Lead developer (Apr 2009 - Dec 2016) of the ADDIS project, University Medical Center Groningen.
• Web developer (Aug 2005 - Aug 2006, Apr 2007 - Sep 2007) at Accepté B.V.
• Webmaster (2002 - 2005) for FysioAmersfoort.

Research

• Post-doctoral researcher (Jan 2013 - Dec 2016) at the University Medical Center Groningen.
• Contractor (Aug 2015 - May 2016) for ClinicalTrials.gov (20%).
• Visiting scholar (Apr 2015 - Jun 2015) at ClinicalTrials.gov, Bethesda, MD, USA.
• Visiting scholar (Oct 2014 - Dec 2014) at Brown University, Providence, RI, USA.
• Research consultant (Mar 2012 - Dec 2013) at gertvv.nl consulting.
  Advising companies on the conduct of statistical and decision analyses, especially network meta-analysis.

Teaching

• Teaching assistant (Dec 2006 - Jun 2009), Artificial Intelligence, University of Groningen.
  Courses: Advanced Logics (2006/2007, 2007/2008, 2008/2009), Artificial Intelligence 1 (2006/2007), Signal Processing (2006/2007), Multi-agent Systems (2007/2008).

Volunteer activities

• Internet help desk volunteer (Sep 2006 - Aug 2008)
  Help desk volunteer for campus-net like internet connections for a large student building in Groningen. Troubleshooting, mediating abuse cases and participating in monthly meetings to discuss policy and infrastructure improvements with the University of Groningen. Taking minutes of the monthly meetings from October 2007 onwards.
• Bar committee chairman (Jun 2005 - Jun 2007)
  Preparing and presiding over regular meetings, continuous management tasks.
• Bar committee volunteer (May 2004 - Aug 2007)
  Tasks included bar tending, organising parties, designing promotional materials and building websites.

Education and training

Primary education

• PhD, Medical Sciences (April 2009 - December 2012) at the University of Groningen.
  A PhD in the context of the Top Institute Pharma project Escher. See the PhD page for more information.
  Degree received: 2012-12-19 (cum laude)
• MSc, Artificial Intelligence (Feb 2007 - Apr 2009) at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (University of Groningen).
  A two year programme, including a 45 ECTS thesis project. I negotiated an alternative programme that includes several courses from the University of Amsterdam (Quantum Computing, Recursion Theory and Lambda Calculus), a 12 ECTS minor project and a number of courses dealing with (multi-)agent systems and software engineering.
  Degree received: 2009-04-19 (cum laude)
• BSc, Artificial Intelligence (Sep 2003 - Feb 2007) at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (University of Groningen).
  Topics included formal logics, biopsychology / neurology, mathematics, programming, language processing, (heuristic) search, cognitive modelling and ergonomics.
  Degree received: 2007-04-15 (cum laude)
• Secondary school (Sep 1997 - Jun 2003): VWO at Farel College, Amersfoort.

Other training and certificates

• English Level 4 (Advanced, C1 level) (Feb 2007 - May 2007) at the Language Center of Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.
• Certificate 'Sociale Hygiëne' (Jun 2006)
  In the Netherlands, this certificate is a requirement for a café or restaurant permit. It includes understanding the everyday considerations of such an establishment as well as dealing with drug and alcohol abuse.

Accomplishments and projects

• ADDIS decision support system for evidence-based drug regulation.
• GeMTC R package for network meta-analysis.
• Master's thesis (Sep 2008 - Apr 2009)
  A 45 ECTS master's research project in the area of market-based control of multi-agent systems, under the supervision of Nick Jennings at the University of Southampton.
• OOPS - Object Oriented Prover for S5n (Mar 2007 - May 200, Jan 2008 - May 2008)
  A tableau proof system for the S5n Epistemic Logic written in Java. Created for the Multi-Agent Systems AI master course, together with Elske van der Vaart. In a 12 ECTS (336 hour) follow-up project I proved soundness and completeness of the tableau algorithm and improved the implmentation in various ways. It was later extended by other Multi-Agent Systems students.
• Bachelor's thesis (Sep 2006 - Feb 2007) in Dutch
• Completed Frank Brokken's "Programming in C/C++" course (Sep 2004 - Mar 2005)
• Completed most of the first semester of Physics in parallel with Artificial Intelligence (2003)
• (2002 - present) Various small, but non-trivial (paid or unpaid) coding projects
  CLI and GUI programs, websites and contributions to open source projects using a plethora of languages, APIs, frameworks etc.
• (1997 - 2001) Self taught VBA and C programming, HTML/CSS and JavaScript

Skills Summary

• Research in medical statistics, decision analysis and decision support systems.
• Statistical computing: R, BUGS, JAGS.
• Programming: C, C++, Java, JavaScript, Clojure, PHP, Python, Scala. Refactoring and design patterns.
• Problem solving skills from Mathematics, Physics and Artificial Intelligence.
• Management and educational experience.
• Knowledge of and experience with software engineering practice, especially Agile methods.
• The ability to quickly master new tools and concepts.
• Favorite tools: LaTeX type setting, git version control, Debian and Ubuntu GNU/Linux.