Jaap Heringa

Prof. Jaap Heringa is a Full Professor in the Faculty of Science (Computer Science department) and the Network Institute at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His research focuses on computational biology, bioinformatics, and systems biology with applications in oncology, genomics, and microbiome studies. He leads projects on genomic instability in cancer, knowledge graph integration for mental health and food safety, and FAIR data principles. Heringa has supervised 18 PhD theses and teaches courses like Algorithms in Sequence Analysis and Bioinformatics Research Projects.

Research Interests: His work spans structural variants in cancer genomics, protein-protein interactions, federated learning in food supply chains, and microbiota-gut-brain axis analysis. Recent studies highlight tumor break load as a prognostic marker and the role of LINE retrotranspositions in colorectal cancer. He collaborates internationally on multi-omics approaches for dementia diagnosis and data infrastructure for European genomics initiatives.

Grants & Collaboration: Principal investigator for the multi-omics project addressing dementia (2019–2024). Active in the Network Institute and ELIXIR-NL initiatives. His lab develops tools like CIBRA (genomic impact analysis) and PRALINE (sequence alignment).

Labs & Teams: Engaged with interdisciplinary teams in computational oncology, bioinformatics software development, and FAIR data implementation. Collaborates with industry partners on food fraud detection systems.