The Vitality Academy

Our Vision
Through a solid transdisciplinary research and societal collaborative innovations, the Vitality Academy aims to enable and empower people from all generations, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds to live a fully vital life

Our Mission
Our mission is to initiate and realize transdisciplinary research in order to better understand how to improve the health equity in today’s society. We closely collaborate with public and private societal and industry partners and citizens to acquire qualitative and quantitative vitality data in our living labs. We use these data to build new and improve existing theories and frameworks towards better understanding of health- and vitality-related behaviors.

Collaboration & Organization

The Vitality Academy is an academic collaboration between Utrecht University (UU), Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), Wageningen University and Research (WUR) and University Medical Center Utrecht (UMCU) made possible by the Strategic Alliance. It aims to enable and empower people from all generations, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds to live a fully vital life.

Currently junior and senior researchers working at the departments of Industrial Design, Architecture Building and Planning and Industrial Engineering and Innovation Science (TU/e), Social Geography and University School of Governance (UU), Public Health PHM (UMCU) and the departments of Agrotechnology and Food Science as well as Social Science (WUR) are active members of Vitality Academy.

The small board of VA currently consists of senior academics prof. Aarnout Brombacher (TU/e), prof. Maarten van Bottenburg (UU) and dr. Marielle Jambroes (UMCU). While Ineke Deelen (UU), Monique Simons (WUR), and Marieke van Beurden and Indre Kalinauskaite (both TU/e) form Vitality Academy’s coordination team.

Meanwhile multidisciplinary teams of Vitality Academy researchers are working on three research projects Vital@2040, CISE and Vitality Data Center . Currently Lonneke van Leewen (UMCU), Anne Annink (UU), Ayla Schwarz (WUR), Maarten van Bottenburg (UU) and Marielle Jambroes (UMCU) form a core team of Vital@2040 project. Iris Geerts (UU), Susan Lange (UU & TU/e), Steven Vos (TU/e), Gideon Bolt (UU), Indre Kalinauskaite (TU/e) and Maikel Waardenburg (UU) represent CISE core research team. Finally, Dick Ettema (UU) and Zhiyong Wang (UU) form a Vitality Data Center research duet.

In the near future we will update Vitality Academy website with more information about our ongoing activities, publications, and of course our organization, including personal biographies of each Vitality Academy member, but for now take a sneak peek in what are the faces behind the initials.

Collaboration

The Vitality Academy is a collaboration between research groups at UU (healthy urban living; public matters; occupational health), TU/e (human vitality and technology) and UMCU (sport medicine; public health; child development & exercise centre).

Partners

The Vitality Academy has a strong ecosystem; it uses and extends its international, national and regional network of enterprises, governments , sport organizations , knowledge institutes, communities of practice (e.g. Sports & Technology) and civil society (e.g. local sport clubs) for valorization and contract research.

Healthier Public

The Vitality Academy is strongly focused on its societal and economical relevance. It combines theory with intervention and implementation research and constructs a scientifically based framework for concrete issues. The gained body of academic knowledge will create a game changer that contributes to improved public health and social resilience for vulnerable groups in urban environments.

EnterpriseNetwork

Municipalities Network

Sport Organizations

Knowledge Institutes

Knowledge Institutes

Knowledge Institutes

Initiators of the Vitality Academy

	Institution	Faculty	Role	Topic
Frank Backx	UMCU	Sport medicine	Prof./ head of department	Exercise is medicine and prevention of sports injuries
Marieke van Beurden	TU/e	Innovation Lab	Program director	Human Vitality & Technology
Maarten van Bottenburg	UU	Law, Economics and Governance	Prof./ head of department/ coordinator Sport & Society	Sport management and sport policy
Aarnout Brombacher	TU/e	Industrial Design	Prof./ dean/ Member Topteam Sport	On and near-body field data acquisition, analysis and design
Martin Dijst	UU	Geo science	Prof./ coordinator Healthy Urban Living	Human Geography and Planning Social Urban Transitions
Frank van Eekeren	UU	Law, Economic and Governance	Dr. /Manager Sport & Society	Organization and governance of sport
Dick Ettema	UU	Geo Science	Dr./ Research director	Geography of sports and physical activity
Caroline Hummels	TU/e	Industrial Design	Prof./ lead Participatory Health & Wellbeing	Design and theory for transformative qualities
Wijnand IJsselsteijn	TU/e	Innovation Sciences	Prof./ scientific director Center for Humans and technology	Cognition and Affect in Human Technology Interaction
Mariëlle Jambroes	UMCU	Medicine	Dr./ MD	Public health education, THINC
Jan de Jonge	TU/e	Industrial Engineering	Prof.	Work and Sport Psychology
Hans Reitsma	UMCU	Medicine	Dr.	Epidemiology: Methodology
Steven Vos	TU/e	Industrial Design	Prof.	Designerly solutions for vital people
Pieter van Wesemael	TU/e	Built Environment	Prof.	Urban planning and design for Healthy Cities