Dr Leo Schouten (L.J.)

Leo J Schouten studied medicine at Maastricht University from 1975 to 1981. He obtained his PhD at the Catholic University of Nijmegen in 1996. From 1983 until 2000 he was head of the cancer registry of the Comprehensive Cancer Centre Limburg (IKL). From 1993 until 1996 he was also researcher at the Department of Epidemiology of the Catholic University of Nijmegen. As head of the registry he founded the regional cancer registry and contributed significantly to the development of the national cancer registry. His research at the registry concentrated on Cancer in the Elderly, Evaluation of Mass Screening, Evaluation of treatment guidelines and Quality of Cancer Registration.

From 1998 until 2002 he was member of the Board of the International Association of Cancer Registries (IACR). He was epidemiological advisor of the IKL cancer registry from 2000 until 2013.

Since 2000 he is working as assistant professor at the Department of Epidemiology of Maastricht University. Since 2006 he is appointed as associate professor. His research activities are focused within the Netherlands Cohort Study on Diet and Cancer. He conducted the follow-up of the cohort (Linkage to the Netherlands Pathology Registry, Netherlands Cancer Registry, Automated Population Registries and the Cause of Death Registry), and coordinated the DNA isolation from toenail clippings. His specific interests are the (genetic ) epidemiology of renal cell, ovarian, endometrial, head-neck cancers and cancer of unknown primary origin. He is (co-) author of more than 200 peer-reviewed papers in international scientific journals.

He coordinates the master of Epidemiology since 2017 and is epidemiological supervisor on behalf of the Netherlands Epidemiological Society.