Meike Bartels, Ph.D.

Meike Bartels, Ph.D., is University Research Chair Professor in Genetics and Well-Being at the Department of Biological Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the Netherlands Twin Register.

After an internship at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane, Australia, she graduated in psychology from the Vrije Universiteit. Her master degree is in Physiological Psychology, with a special focus on behavior genetics. She obtained her Ph.D. in 2003 under the supervision of Prof. Dorret Boomsma. The last months of her Ph.D., she worked at the Virginia Institute of Psychiatric and Behavior Genetics in Richmond, Virginia with Prof. Edwin van den Oord.

In 2014, she was appointed as a full professor under the competitive and honorary University Research Chair program of the Vrije Universiteit. She has published over 175 papers in peer-reviewed journals, including the first molecular genetic evidence for well-being in PNAS and the first genomic variant for well-being in Nature Genetics. Over the course of her research, she increasingly realized that the majority of individuals remain free of psychopathology throughout their life. Ever since, she broadened her focus and became interested in well-being. She conducts and supervises several research projects to gain sight into the underlying sources of variation on well-being. She envisions that with a focus on positive aspects, the public health system will be broadened so that the aim will no longer be to only help to heal the ill, but also to increase overall happiness.