Professor Mieke Van Hemelrijck

Mieke Van Hemelrijck leads the Translational Oncology and Urology Research (TOUR) Team in the School of Cancer & Pharmaceutical Sciences at King's. She became a Reader (Associate Professor) in Cancer Epidemiology in September 2018, and became a Professor in late 2020. She joined the Group in August 2008 from Harvard School of Public Health to study for her PhD on 'Metabolic Syndrome and Prostate Cancer: Biomarkers and Treatment Side-effects', which she completed in November 2010. At Harvard, her Master's thesis focused on bladder cancer and smoking patterns, building on her Master's in Statistical Data-Analysis received from Ghent University in her home country of Belgium in 2006.

As a cancer epidemiologist working with national registers and hospital-based (biobank) data in the UK and Europe, Prof Van Hemelrijck has expertise in clinical data, statistics, clinical practice and patient care in the area of uro-oncology. Moreover, several of her PhD students and staff are conducting qualitative research into understanding patients’ needs and experiences (e.g. development of educational support tool for men with prostate cancer on active surveillance; development of an exercise intervention as part of standard care for men with prostate cancer). Furthermore, Prof Van Hemelrijck has worked with Movember on developing a consensus document on semantics in active surveillance for men with prostate cancer using a modified Delphi consensus procedure. Most recently, Prof Van Hemelrijck started working with the European Association of Urology (EAU) Guidelines Office as part of the EU-funded PIONEER Consortium – big data for prostate cancer. She is leading the work package that aims to develop standardised definitions of prostate cancer outcomes among different stakeholders using the Delphi consensus procedure. Prof Van Hemelrijck’s prostate cancer research is internationally recognised and she is currently also involved in another large international Consortim: ReIMAGINE

Given Mieke’s interest in clinical epidemiology of urological cancers, she has coordinated the King’s Health Partners' Uro-Oncology Programme, which brings together all researchers and clinicians involved in urological cancer research at KHP since 2012. In 2013, she became a Visiting Researcher at the Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, funded by a Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research Fellowship.

Since 2008, Mieke has supervised more than 40 postgraduate and undergraduate students at King's, as well as being first supervisor currently for three PhD students in the TOUR team. Her teaching experience covers the two BSc Modules (Principles of Epidemiology and Sports, Exercise, Health, and Medicine I) hosted by the Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine. She has published more than 240 original articles, of which she is first author on over 40 and last author on over 100.