Rifka Weehuizen
Managing Director
Rifka Weehuizen is managing director of USIAS since July 2012, where she is responsible together with the director for the overall management and strategy of the organisation and all its processes.
Rifka has an MA in History (University of Groningen) and a PhD in Economics and Psychology (University of Maastricht) with a thesis on ‘mental capital’. She did part of her studies at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and has been a visiting researcher at the University of California in San Francisco (MACSES) and the University of Toronto.
Before joining USIAS she was senior science officer for the Social Sciences and Humanities at the European Science Foundation (ESF) in Strasbourg. Over the years she has held various positions in the area of research policy, with a focus on research agenda setting, bringing together academia, policy, business and society. She has worked for the Netherlands Study Centre for Technology Trends (STT), the joint research institute of the United Nations University and the University of Maastricht (UNU-MERIT), the Netherlands Council for Health Research, now part of the Netherlands Health Council (GR), and the Advisory Council for Science, Technology and Innovation (AWTI) in The Hague.