Fariba Ahmadizar, PharmD, MSc, PhD in Epidemiology, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Primary Care (HAG) at Amsterdam UMC, where she leads an independent research programme in cardiometabolic precision epidemiology. Her research focuses on understanding how metabolic dysfunction and glucose dysregulation contribute to heterogeneous cardiovascular and neurovascular ageing and dementia risk, with the ultimate goal of developing more precise and stratified prevention strategies.

Research and Academic Contributions

Dr. Ahmadizar’s research integrates longitudinal and molecular epidemiology with genetics, metabolomics, pharmacoepidemiology, causal inference, and predictive modelling to elucidate the mechanisms and determinants of heterogeneous disease trajectories. A central theme of her work is understanding why individuals with similar cardiometabolic risk profiles develop different cardiovascular, neurovascular, and cognitive outcomes. By bridging population health, methodological innovation, and translational precision medicine, her research places particular emphasis on the early stages of metabolic dysfunction and their implications for healthy ageing.

She is Coordinator and Principal Investigator of the JPND-funded NeuroSync consortium, which investigates the role of glucose dysregulation in dementia and dementia progression. She is also Principal Investigator and national coordinator of the EWUU-funded 3HOWs4DM project, which examines the relationship between blood glucose fluctuations and cognitive function in a prospective study. Together, these programmes represent an emerging independent research line linking metabolic dysfunction to brain ageing and dementia through complementary mechanistic, causal, and predictive approaches.

Dr. Ahmadizar has secured and contributed to competitive national and international research funding and has extensive experience supervising PhD candidates, postdoctoral researchers, and MSc students. She is actively engaged in academic teaching and coordination, including coordination of the Molecular Pharmacoepidemiology course at Dutch institutions, and holds the University Teaching Qualification (BKO).

In addition to her research and teaching activities, Dr. Ahmadizar contributes to the academic community through her role as a member of the Amsterdam Public Health Scientific Quality Committee, Co-chair of CogniD, the European Association for the Study of Diabetes Study Group on Cognition and Diabetes, and Associate Editor of the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. Her long-term goal is to translate insights into cardiometabolic heterogeneity into more precise prevention strategies for cardiovascular disease and dementia.

External Positions

• Co-chair, CogniD Study Group, European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD)

• Associate Editor, European Journal of Preventive Cardiology (EJPC)

• Cardiometabolic epidemiology
• Precision medicine
• Molecular epidemiology
• Dementia and cognitive ageing
• Pharmacoepidemiology
• Causal inference