Prof. Marcel van Vugt is full professor (2018) at the Department of Medical Oncology, and serves as the director of the Cancer Research Center Groningen. He obtained his PhD at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, under supervision of Prof. Rene Medema, where he studied cell cycle regulation by Polo-like kinase-1. This interest continued during his postdoctoral fellowship, where Marcel studied the regulation of the DNA damage checkpoint by cell cycle kinases in the laboratory of Michael B. Yaffe at the David H. Koch, at the institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, Cambridge USA). In 2009, Marcel started an independent research group at the University of Groningen, where his research focuses on how normal cells and cancer cells deal with DNA damage, and how this knowledge can be used to improve cancer therapy.