Prof. Dr. Schelto Kruijff

Prof. dr. Schelto Kruijff is a trained Surgical Oncologist and Endocrine Surgeon and currently works in the UMCG as a surgeon-scientist with a focus on targeted- and non-targeted Fluorescence-Guided Surgery in the surgical treatment of endocrine and oncology malignancies. He obtained a PhD at the department of surgical oncology in 2011 after which he departed in 2012/13 for an endocrine surgical/research TS Reeve fellowship at the University of Sydney, Australia. After having returned Kruijff followed a fellowship in hepato-biliary surgery, after which he was asked to fulfill a position as surgeon-scientist at the department of Surgical Oncology in the UMCG. He was granted a young investigator grant by the Dutch Cancer Foundation, developing the potential of fluorescence-guided surgery in the treatment of thyroid cancer.

Kruijff’s dream is to bring Fluorescence-Guided Surgery to clinical practice for which he recently founded the Dutch Fluorescence Guided Surgery Group together with peers from Leiden, Rotterdam, and Maastricht.

He is also part of one of the strongest fluorescent multidisciplinary research groups, the Optical Molecular Imaging Group of Groningen (OMIG), together with Prof. Wouter Nagengast and Prof Max Witjes.

Fluorescence-Guided Surgery is a part of his sustainable surgery chair, where he wants to achieve more surgical effectiveness using fewer means. Kruijff is also heavily involved in global surgery spreading oncology knowledge to low and middle-income countries and is actively part of the UMCG Green Team, trying to reduce the environmental burden of the operation room.