In this interview, 2025 Neuronline Community Leader Maria-Tzousi Papavergi speaks to Daniel van den Hove, PhD, professor in neuroepigenetics and head of the Section Fundamental Neuroscience in the Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Read on to learn about the person beyond the bench and the experiences that have shaped van de Hove's journey as a scientist.
Can you tell us a bit about your background and what initially inspired you to pursue neuroscience? Was there a moment, experience, book, or mentor that sparked your curiosity about the brain?
I initially wanted to become a medical doctor. In the Netherlands though, there’s only a limited number of spots for studying medicine available. I did not win a ticket in the associated lottery. So, I decided to study medical biology, and that’s where I got in touch with neuroscience. From the first course into neuroscience, I got hooked. I cannot remember a specific moment or book or anything, but for sure some family members having psychiatric conditions added to the interest.
What does a typical day look like for you, in or out of the lab? Are there any routines or habits that help you stay grounded, creative, or productive?
I get up at 6:30 a.m., prepare some breakfast and my kids’ lunchboxes, and try to read the newspaper. I occasionally read some emails, Slack, or WhatsApp messages if needed on the phone. I then bring my youngest daughter to school at 8 a.m., after which I head to work.
At work, my days are quite diverse. I do science, where I supervise PhD students and postdocs. I'm also heading a section (which includes several full professors, associate and assistant professors, and postdocs) as a line manager. I'm in several committees covering a wide variety of topics, ranging from animal ethics to the library and committees dealing with promoting people within academia. I am in several scientific advisory boards such as Alzheimer Netherlands or the Dutch Brain Foundation. I also teach a lot. For example, I coordinate a research master program, coordinate courses, give lectures, act as a tutor, etc., on various topics, including neuroanatomy, psychiatric neuroscience and epigenetics. And everything in between you could say. All in all, my day is quite diverse with discussing data, teaching, line managing, research grant writing. I think the usual for a PI. Except for maybe when it comes to teaching, where we are expected to teach approximately 50% of our time, which I like to do, so that's not the problem. But, in the end, with all the other tasks on your plate, you work quite a bit. So, it's more than a full term position, you could say.
Outside of science, do you have any hobbies or passions? If so, do you find that they somehow influence or complement your research or scientific thinking?
I have a fish tank, and I have a huge garden, so there are loads of distraction there. Creating is what I like, so building furniture or a fence or redecorating a part of the garden or propagating plants – I love it all. But most of my spare time is invested in cooking and my family/kids, including their hobbies, as I am the coach of my son’s soccer team (since he was five, now 13-14 year-old boys' team). When science and academia frustrates me, my family provides distraction. And raising kids is way more difficult than anything else in life, so that helps putting things into perspective. So, yes, all this complements research. It also keeps the mind fresh by not getting stuck in certain thinking patterns.
What personal or professional skills have made the biggest difference in your journey as a scientist? Has volunteering played a role in your growth or perspective along the way?
What is very important here is the ability to distract/disconnect from work. This job is quite stressful at occasions and it's important to let go. At regular occasions, you have to be able to deal with the lack of an instant reward and disappointment. Science is all about failure. From experiments that don’t work out as intended to grant applications that get rejected. So you have to be able to deal with failure and, even to a certain degree maybe, use it to fuel your desire to fail better next time. For example, when it comes to applying for grants, you will fail at regular occasions, just like with experiments in the lab, so to be prepared for disappointment is very important. To be able to disconnect and to put things into perspective is quite relevant as well in this context. Volunteering can help here. As I said before, I'm also a soccer coach, and I've also been a lifeguard for several years. That all helps you to disconnect but also to learn how to deal with people that are different. I think this is extremely important in academia. "Be where they are," I always say you can have a certain view on things. Or you can communicate in a certain way, but next to a sender, there's also a receiver, i.e. there's another party these people often think and communicate differently. You have to be able to deal with different types of people, at all domains within academia, and particularly as a line manager. This is an important or ability you have to develop to make things work. Imagine how other people see things and respect that.
What drives you to advocate for neuroscience and science in general? In the current climate in the United States, where science funding, public trust in science, and policy discussions around research are increasingly critical, what role do you think scientists should play in advocacy? How can early-career researchers contribute to protecting and promoting scientific research and education?
What drives me most is to make this world a better place. And you can do that in different ways. I can try to find a cure for a certain disease through research, but I can also teach and try to inspire the next generation through teaching or as a supervisor. What is crucial here is to connect people. There is ample of reasons you could get frustrated about the current situation in the world, but frustration will not bring us anywhere. While it may seem obvious at certain occasions who’s right and who’s wrong or what is true or what isn’t, it doesn’t really help to focus on your point of view in today’s society. That will likely only enlarge the gap between you and others. Be where they are and understand where this is coming from. Don’t judge. Force bridges. Connect. Stimulate open discussions. Reach out to the public, and don’t give up in doing so.
If you could give your younger self one piece of advice at the start of your scientific career, what would it be?
I have two pieces of advice. First, do what you love and love what you do. Engage in scientific work that you like, and not in what you think others want you to do. Don't focus too much on what you think will bring you the next job or gives you the best chance for success but follow your heart and your passion in this respect. Along this same line, make sure you surround yourself by people you like. Great mentors, for example, are scarce. A great mentor can bring you further than anything else. Talents can be destroyed by bad leaders. Many successful scientists are not in this job for the right reasons, and they don’t care when their success is on the expense of others. When applying for a job, check out the PI’s people management reputation next to their scientific track record.
The second one is related to something I missed at the beginning of my academic journey. I always thought your focus would become more and more narrow, like when becoming a biomedical scientist in my case, and then from there I moved in the direction of neuroscience. And then I thought, now I'm focusing on stress research., so I can only become an expert on a certain small domain, and I thought this path would only become more and more narrow with time passing. As if there's only one route to success in academia and one can only become more specific and more of an expert on a very small and tiny domain. But that's not what science is about. It's about creative thinking, not about narrowing your mind, but about broadening it. That way of thinking and related skills can be applied to different domains and different disease areas, and different biomedical concepts. I was sort of anxious at the beginning that there's only one path, and I have to be better than all these others that are focusing on the same research topic. And if I fail, that will be the end of everything, as in it was all-or-nothing. This actually is also connected the misunderstanding that all the skills that you develop just serve you as an academic. These actually can be applied to so many different domains. Even outside of academia. You can apply this to working in a company or local government. As a teacher in high school or college. I'm sure now that I would fit in several domains, and that's something nobody ever told me, so I was always afraid at the beginning that there was this one and only path with failure around the corner. And what then? What is the alternative? I didn't have a clue except for maybe teaching in high school. Over the years, I have learned that this is complete rubbish. For example, the skills that you develop from collaborating with others, teaching and being in committees, being a line manager, basically anything you can think of, can also help you outside of your domain and academia. The world is at your feet, if you just believe in it.
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