Laura Heitman

Laura H. Heitman obtained her PhD in 2009, after which she started as a tenure track assistant professor during which she worked at several (inter)national labs as a guest scientist. She received tenure in 2015, and in 2020 became full professor of Molecular Pharmacology at the Division of Medicinal Chemistry at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (Leiden University). Since April 2024 she is chair of this division, and since 2019 she is also affiliated with Oncode Institute. Her research interests are mainly focused on understanding and improving drug-receptor interactions, and more specifically, target binding kinetics and allosteric modulation of GPCRs. She has obtained several competitive research grants, both personal and as part of consortia, all allowing her to study these novel, and clinically relevant concepts for drug action. Her research activities have currently led to an authorship on over 140 papers in this field, including one in Science (2012) and one in Nature (2016) with an H-index of 43. Lastly, she is the recipient of multiple awards (e.g. the ‘2017 MedChemComm Emerging Investigator’-award, winner of the ‘2022 TOPX Female to Follow’-award).