Dr. Mieke van Haelst is a consultant clinical geneticist, highly experienced in pediatric genetics and genetics of obesity disorders. She has a strong research interest in identifying new genetic causes of rare Mendelian diseases. Fruitful international collaborations already successfully led to detection of novel genetic causes of rare diseases published in high impact journals. She has set up several molecular diagnostic genetic services for these disorders. She is the president of the Dutch Society of Human Genetics (NVHG), chair of the committee for Dutch Genetics Conferences and organizer the bi-annual joint Dutch-British Clinical Genetics Meetings. She has initiated yearly European Clinics for rare genetic disorders (Cantu clinic, 16p11.2 clinic and STXBP1 clinic) and is the founder of the European obesity genetic collaboration meeting. She is a faculty member of the Indian UK education forum participating in yearly lectures at Indian Universities. At the moment she is supervising 6 PhD students and the Lead Trainer for Specialist Registrars in Clinical Genetics at VUmc, Amsterdam.