Executive Board

Jos Bessems
Name: 
Jos Bessems, PhD
Role: 
Treasurer
Affiliation: 
Senior R&D at VITO
Short biography: 

Jos GM Bessems has been a European regulatory toxicologist and risk assessor for over 20 years. He has experience in human health hazard and risk assessments of a wide range of chemicals domains using different risk assessment paradigms. He has focussed on toxicokinetics and the use of non-animal approaches. He has been a member of several OECD working groups and participated in the drafting and revision of OECD Test Guidelines. He has acted as an ad hoc expert to a working group of EMA. Dr Bessems has participated in various international activities on the development of new risk assessment methodologies for pesticides as well as industrial chemicals (REACH). He chaired the combined "EPAA and EURL ECVAM workshop on PBTK modelling tools for risk assessment purposes" held at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in Ispra in 2011. He was invited speaker at many workshops and symposia organised by ECHA, EFSA, OECD, SOT, EUROTOX, UTOX, ILSI-HESI and ICCA. He lectured at several post-graduate and continuing education courses. Recently, he shifted focus to exposure and epidemiology (molecular epidemiology, biomarkers of exposure, biomarkers of (preclinical) effects and genomic susceptibility). Another shift is that towards the interface between science and policy as illustrated with the publication of the European Commission's JRC Science to Policy Report "EURL ECVAM strategy for achieving 3Rs impact in the assessment of toxicokinetics and systemic toxicity". Jos Bessems is co-founder and Board member of ISES Europe and active to set up a European Strategy for Exposure Science that should include issues such as a European curriculum and ertification in exposure science and development of a European research agenda in exposure science.