Veni — the fellowship behind NEPTUNE
A personal, three-year career grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) — awarded to continue the kidney-protection line independently, and the funding vehicle for NEPTUNE, my study of ketone-induced renoprotection during cardiac surgery.
This page covers the fellowship itself — its funder, career context, stakeholders, and collaborators. For the science — the three work packages, methods, and clinical trial design — see the NEPTUNE page.
What a Veni is
The Veni is the entry-level grant in NWO’s Talent Programme (Veni–Vidi–Vici), intended for excellent researchers who recently obtained their PhD to develop their own research ideas for a period of three years. For the health domain, it is administered by ZonMw on NWO’s behalf. Receiving one is widely regarded as a formative step toward research independence — mine follows directly from the plan set out at the end of my Rubicon fellowship in 2020, which named a Veni application as the explicit next goal.
Career context
This proposal draws a direct line from my PhD in perioperative metabolism and endocrinology, through a postdoctoral fellowship in kidney protection, to an independent research programme connecting the two: perioperative metabolism and kidney health. Amsterdam UMC supports the fellowship with protected research time, and my mentoring professors have nominated me for an academic tenure track, of which this grant is a critical step. I remain an international research fellow with the Florey Institute in Melbourne, and continue to co-supervise PhD students building on this line.
Stakeholders & collaborators
The fellowship’s impact plan distinguishes a scientific track (ketone metabolism and CSA-AKI, aimed at academic and clinical researchers in anaesthesiology, intensive care, cardiothoracic surgery, endocrinology, nephrology and cardiology) from a societal one (innovative diagnostics — PuO2 and contrast-enhanced renal ultrasound — aimed at earlier, better assessment of kidney distress in clinical practice).
- Patient societies: close, ongoing contact with representatives from the Dutch Kidney Patients Association (NVN), the Dutch Heart Foundation network (Harteraad), and the Dutch Diabetes Association (DVN) for dissemination and co-design of further research.
- Commercial partners: Nova Biomedical, supplying point-of-care ketone monitoring equipment; Oxford Optronics, an ongoing collaboration on urinary oxygenation monitoring technology and the design of a future international interventional study.
- Research institutes: the Amsterdam Cardiovascular Sciences and Amsterdam Gastroenterology Endocrinology Metabolism institutes support the work internally alongside the Florey Institute, Melbourne.
Where this leads
This fellowship funds NEPTUNE end-to-end — from metabolomic analysis of stored MERCURI-2 samples, through a mechanistic ovine model, to a clinical proof-of-concept trial in cardiac surgery patients.