Johan Westerhuis

Info

Johan A. Westerhuis

Work address:
Group Biosystems Data Analysis, University of Amsterdam
Science Park 904, 1098 XH, Amsterdam
Email: j.a.westerhuis@uva.nl
Websites:
www.bdagroup.nl; https://www.uva.nl/profiel/w/e/j.a.westerhuis/j.a.westerhuis.html

Professional Career

Johan Westerhuis studied Analytical Chemistry/Chemometrics at the Rijks Hogeschool Groningen where he received his BSc degree in 1989. He then went to the Catholic University of Nijmegen to study Chemistry/Chemometrics in the group of Dr. L.M.C. Buydens, where he received his MSc degree in 1992. From 1992-1997 he worked towards a PhD at the University Centre for Pharmacy at the University of Groningen on Multivariate Statistical Modeling of the Pharmaceutical Process of Wet Granulation and Tableting. From 1997 until 1998 he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada together with Dr. JF MacGregor. In October 1998 he joined the former Process Analysis & Chemometrics group, now the Biosystems Data Analysis group at the University of Amsterdam. Since 2012 he also has an extraordinary professor position at the North West university in Potchefstroom, South Africa.

Research

Johan Westerhuis is an assistant professor in the Biosystems Data Analysis group. His main research interest is in developing methodologies for analysis of high dimensional omics data. This combines design of experiments, data preprocessing, development of new methods that are able to deal with the complexity of omics data and also their validation procedures. He has worked mainly in the field of metabolomics but is now also working on microbiome data analysis and integration of multiple omics modalities.

Some recent key papers are:

Repeated measures ASCA+ for analysis of longitudinal intervention studies with multivariate outcome data

A strategy for differential abundance analysis of sparse microbiome data with group-wise structured zeros
Multi-way modelling of oral microbial dynamics and host-microbiome interactions during induced gingivitis
MASCARA: coexpression analysis in data from designed experiments

New projects

In 2025 two new projects will start:

Within the project: New Generation Immuno-Dermatology (NGID) we will develop new data analysis methods that are able to integrate all information from measured (e.g. CYTOF, Metabolomics, Microbiome) and provided (clinical and personal) to come to high tech personalized skin care.

In Microp phase2 we will develop Causal models using Structural Equation Models and Graphical Chain Models to clarify the relationships between plant genomes, root exudate, soil microbiome and health of the plants.

 

Courses and topics

MSc Chemistry (joint degree)

Applied Chemometrics & Statistics: ASCA, Data Fusion, Validation.

Advanced Chemometrics & Statistics: Linear Algebra for data analysis, Multivariate Curve Resolution, Partial Least Squares.

Chemometrics & Statistics: Experimental design, Error propagation.

MSc Bioinformatics and Systems Biology (joint degree)

Biosystems Data Analysis: Classification, Linear Algebra for data analysis, Validation, ASCA.

MSc Biomedical Sciences

Biomedical Systems Biology: Challenge tests and Nutrikinetics.

BSc Biomedische Wetenschappen

OMICS in de biomedische wetenschappen: Experimental Design, Metabolomics Data Analysis.