Committees

Prof dr Jan Ramaekers (chair) holds a chair in Psychopharmacology and behavioral toxicology at Maastricht University (UM). His work focuses on behavioral toxicology of drugs and combines methods from psychopharmacology, forensic toxicology and neuroscience to determine drug induced changes in human performance.

Prof dr Han de Gier (co-chair) emeritus, dedicated to research in drugs and driving for more than four decades, during which he served ICADTS (Organization and Foundation) for 17 years. He has contributed to various national and international expert panels in the field of medicines and driving, with a particular interest to apply research outcomes for informing patients who drive.

Dr Sjoerd Houwing is an expert on epidemiological research in the field of driving under the influence of psychoactive substances. He is also a member of various national and international working groups on topics such as drug driving enforcement, prevalence studies on alcohol use in traffic and alcohol interlock programs.

Dr Beitske Smink studied pharmacy and is an expert in forensic toxicology. She was a member of the working group ‘drugs and driving’ of the Ministry of Security and Justice and coordinated expert committees on legal limits for illicit drugs that proposed legal limits for drug of abuse in traffic that came into effect in 2017.

Dr Joris Verster is director of the Utrecht Centre for Drugs & Driving at Utrecht University. He has a track record of clinical trials examining the effects of CNS drugs and psychoactive substances on cognitive and psychomotor functioning, memory, and daily activities such as driving a car.

Drs. Ine Buuron is senior policy advisor at the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, directorate for Roads and Traffic Safety. Reducing the abuse of alcohol and drugs by drivers is a big priority for the Dutch government in order to bring down the number of casualties in traffic accidents.

Aurora van de Loo is working for the Utrecht Centre for Drugs and Driving at the Institute for Risk assessment Sciences (IRAS). She has coordinated multiple clinical trials to examine the effect of CNS drugs and psychoactive substances on on-the-road driving. She is also persuing a PhD in how the immune system is related to alcohol hangovers.

Dr Eef Theunissen is an assistant professor at the department of Neuropsychology and Psychopharmacology at Maastricht University. She has coordinated several clinical trials studying the effects of licit and illicit drugs on human behavior and cognition, including the effects on driving performance. The last couple of years she has focused on the effects of cannabis and synthetic cannabinoids.

Dr. Charles Goldenbeld, is a senior researcher for the Dutch Road Safety Institute SWOV. SWOV is an independent research institute that aims to make traffic safer by providing scientific evidence on road safety issues. Since 1992 Charles has been involved in road safety research on traffic behaviour and attitudes, traffic enforcement and road safety campaigns. He has participated in several European research projects on road safety (BestPoint, CAST, ESCAPE, GADGET, PEPPER, SARTRE 1-4, SafetyNET, DaCoTa, Promising, SaferAfrica, SafetyCube, Sunflower, & ESRA1, ESRA2).