Gert van Valkenhoef

Curriculum Vitae

Gert van Valkenhoef
Copenhagen, Denmark
E-mail: gert [at] gertvv [dot] nl
Phone: (on request)

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

Work Experience

Software development

• Head of IT development and infrastructure (Jul 2022 - present) at the Cochrane Collaboration.
  I took on additional responsibilities at Cochrane as it went through a period of drastic organizational change. I focused on creating the conditions for effective and sustainable IT.
  Responsibilities: lead Cochrane’s IT teams, including the infrastructure operations and systems administration side as well as contractors and partners. Play a key role in planning and budgetting and provide technical and/or overall leadership of key projects.
• IT development manager (Jun 2016 - Jun 2022) at the Cochrane Collaboration.
  I lead Cochrane’s over-extended software development teams through an Agile transformation as well as an infrastructure and architecture modernization whilst continuing to support IT-dependent strategic initiatives, applying domain knowledge from my research career.
  Responsibilities: team and individual management, systems architecture, product ownership, software design, domain modeling, prioritization, planning and project management, rapid feasibility analysis and effort estimation, vendor selection, and targeted contributions to software development and testing.
• Lead developer (Apr 2009 - Dec 2016) of the ADDIS project, University Medical Center Groningen.
  Lead the development of ambitious evidence-based decision support systems for health policy decision making.
• 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.
  A continuation of my PhD research.
• 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.

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.
• Bar committee volunteer (May 2004 - Aug 2007) & chairman (Jun 2005 - Jun 2007)
  Tasks included bar tending, organising parties, designing promotional materials and building websites.

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 included 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.

Accomplishments and projects

• Helped transform Cochrane's approach to IT, including implementing Scrum, the introduction of CI/CD, the step-wise move from bespoke manual deployment and hosting solutions to a uniform and controlled environment, the piecemeal decommissioning of a 20-year old legacy behemoth, and re-architecting the editorial management and publishing solutions.

• Co-lead the design and implementation of Cochrane's "focused review format", the first major overhaul of Cochrane reviews in decades, aimed at reviews that are faster to produce and easier to read, while streamlining Cochrane's XML-first technology and aligning to industry standards.
• Lead the design and implementation of "study-centric data", a new way of managing data in Cochrane RevMan that enables interoperability with data extraction tools, facilitates a structured approach to evidence synthesis, and provides the foundation for implementation of complex synthesis methods.
• 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 2007, Jan 2008 - May 2008)
  A tableau proof system for the S5_n Epistemic Logic written in Java, including a proof of soundness and completeness. It was later extended by other Multi-Agent Systems students.
• Completed most of the first semester of Physics in parallel with Artificial Intelligence (2003)
• (1997 - 2001) Self taught VBA and C programming, HTML/CSS and JavaScript

Skills Summary

• Programming: Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, C, C++, Clojure, Julia, Gleam, PHP, Python, Scala. Refactoring and design patterns. Full stack and DevOps.
• Software architecture, IT infrastructure, and cloud computing (primarily AWS).
• Research in medical statistics, decision analysis and decision support systems.
• Statistical computing: R, BUGS, JAGS, Julia.
• Problem solving skills from Mathematics, Physics and Artificial Intelligence.
• Management and educational experience.
• The ability to quickly master new tools and concepts.
• Languages: Dutch (native), English (fluent), Danish (basic), German (rudimentary), French (rudimentary).
• Favorite tools: linux, git, neovim, latex, ssh, FaaS.