Radboud University Medical Centre (Radboudumc)

Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour

Departments of Human Genetics, Psychiatry and Cognitive Neuroscience

Geert Grooteplein 10

6532 GA Nijmegen


Website Radboud

Website Donders

Project leader

Barbara Franke, PhD
Phone: +31 24 3614017
E-mail

Project staff

Jan K. Buitelaar, MD, PhD
Phone: +31 24 3610655
E-mail
Janneke Dammers (research assistant)
Phone: +31 24 3618929/68903
E-mail

Institute presentation

The Radboud University Medical Centre is a leading Dutch institute for medical research. The Neuropsychiatry Research Group, including the department of Cognitive Neuroscience, the department of Psychiatry and the Karakter Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Centre are specialized in top-level clinical care and research in neuropsychiatric disorders, with a special emphasis on neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD and autism spectrum disorders – in children and adults. The Nijmegen outpatient clinics see about 2000 new children and adolescent patients and 800 new adult patients a year.


Research within the neuropsychiatric centres is part of the Donders Institute, a world-renowned centre of research expertise in neuroscience. Over 500 researchers work at the Donders on unravelling the mechanisms underlying brain function. We have full access to research magnetic resonance imaging facilities (MRI) of 1.5 Tesla, 3 Tesla and 7 Tesla as well as a mock scanner at the Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging within the Donders Institute.


The department of Human Genetics of the RUNMC is an internationally top-ranking genetics group. It is the largest centre for genetics research, clinical diagnostics and genetics counselling in Europe. Biobanking is fully automated from DNA-isolation to sample storage and tracking. We have full access to advanced Affymetrix genotyping facilities and are amply experienced in next generation sequencing. In fact, we were among the first to implement next generation exome sequencing into clinical diagnostics. Three Life Technologies 5500XL sequencers and an Ion Torrent Personalized Genome Machine Sequencer (Life Technologies) are available to us for genome sequencing and candidate resequencing, respectively. A total of 12 bioinformaticians and 3 genetic statisticians are based at Human Genetics for data analysis.