Marieke J. Schuurmans professor and chair in Nursing Science UMC Utrecht and professor of Care for older people University of Applied Sciences in Utrecht.  She worked over ten years as a clinical nurse specialist in geriatric medicine and is expert in complex nursing care for older people. In her  PhDstudy she developed the Delirium Observation Screening (DOS) Scale which is nowadays part of regular nursing care in Dutch hospitals and which is translated in numerous languages. Her current research focuses on daily functioning of older people with multimorbidity. Some of her recent grants (combined funding 4000 K€):  the TASTE programme, research on selfmanagement in multmorbid patients; the HELP study, a multicenter study to evaluate cost-effectiveness of a nurse-led inhospital program to prevent delirium;   the  U PROFIT study, a clinical trial in 90 primary care practices to evaluate comprehensive geriatric care and the PROFIEL study, an epidemiological longitudinal cohort study in 550 older people targeting bio, psycho, social determinants of functional decline. Marieke Schuurmans is responsible for the Nursing Science Master Program of the University Utrecht (annual graduation forty five students) and supervises twenty PhD students.  She is a member of the Dutch Health Council, chair of the research committee of the National Association of Nurses and a fellow of the European Association of Nursing Scientists. She has published over sixty peer-reviewed papers, over forty practice publications and contributed to more than twenty books. In the last fifteen years she gave over a hundred lectures on national and international conferences. Since 2013 she is Chief Nursing Officer.