Carlijn Bouten is professor of Cell-Matrix Interactions in Cardiovascular Regeneration at the department of Biomedical Engineering. She received MSc degree in 1991 from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. In 1995, she obtained her PhD degree from Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e, the Netherlands). She performed postdoctoral research at the Université Laval (Quebec), University of London, and at TU/e. She is a recipient of the Aspasia Career Development award of the Dutch Science Foundation NWO (2002), which awarded her a VICI grant for her research on heart valve tissue engineering in 2003. From 2005-2010 Bouten was member of The Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). Since 2017, she leads the national gravitation program Materials-Driven Regeneration. In that same year she was elected member of the KNAW.