“Education is the vaccine against misinformation”
Ecraid CEO and co-founder Marc Bonten is an accomplished physician-epidemiologist whose distinguished career spans key themes in clinical microbiology, antimicrobial resistance, and public health. On 1 July 2025, he took on the new role of Vice-Dean Education at the University Medical Center Utrecht.
Marc is no stranger to the University Medical Center Utrecht (UMCU). For more than 25 years, he has combined his clinical and scientific expertise as an internist-infectiologist, microbiologist, and epidemiologist with leadership roles within the university medical centre and several large European infectious disease research consortia – including COMBACTE, ECRAID-Base and VITAL – among others.
From Research to Education Leadership
In recent years, however, the professor of molecular epidemiology has felt a growing responsibility to return to education to help shape and strengthen training for the next generations of scientists and researchers.
And the motivation behind his shift to education? His experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic: “After years of focussing on patient care and scientific research, I felt more and more a need to contribute to education. This was also a result of my experiences during the corona pandemic. It became very clear how misinformation determines the image and harms policy. Only good education can offer a counterbalance there."
“Education is the vaccine against misinformation. We must not only provide our students with knowledge, but also the skills to think critically and collaborate effectively – also as professionals. In the coming months, I will explore how these aspects can be integrated in the various courses.”
– Marc Bonten, CEO of Ecraid, and Vice-Dean of Education and Chairman of the Education Center UMC Utrecht from 1 July 2025.
Photo credit: RTV Utrecht
Future-proof Education
As Vice-Dean of Education at UMC Utrecht, Marc’s top priority is to make education future-proof. This includes the renewal of three ongoing curricula – Medicine, Clinical Health Sciences, and Biomedical Sciences, ensuring that these programmes keep pace with societal changes, scientific progress, and the needs of both students and patients. To reflect the broadening scope, the university’s medical faculty has been renamed “Faculty of Medical Sciences”.
The reason behind this change, Marc explains, is both practical and significant: “Medicine is no longer the only programme within our faculty, and most students do not become doctors at all. On top of that, it is good to underline that medical training is a scientific education, in which the learning of scientific skills is part of the curriculum.”
“Futureproofing our education can be explained in several ways. You want to teach students to keep on learning – even after their education with us. At the same time, we must keep innovating and improving education, and this requires resources. My concern is that budgets for education will not grow in the coming years. So we have to consider whether, and how, we can share our expertise more broadly. These are important issues.”
Looking Ahead
Marc hopes that in five years’ time, the Faculty of Medical Sciences will still be known for its excellent and innovative education, preparing students for the future while creating an environment where new ideas thrive.
He says, “For the students, I hope they look back on their student days with just as much pleasure as I do with mine. I learned a lot, did a lot and made friends for life.”
Transition at Ecraid
Marc Bonten will step down as Ecraid’s CEO on 1 January 2026. Under his leadership, Ecraid has grown from EU-funded projects into Europe’s leading clinical research and not-for-profit network for infectious diseases. We thank him warmly for his vision and dedication and wish him every success in his new endeavours at UMCU Utrecht.
This article was adapted from UMC Utrecht’s original interview (in Dutch).