Dr. Sander Kersten received his MSc degree in Human Nutrition from Wageningen University in 1993. He subsequently moved to the USA and earned his PhD in Nutritional Biochemistry from Cornell University in 1997. After a postdoctoral stay in the laboratory of Dr. Walter Wahli at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, he moved back to Wageningen in 2000, initially as a fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and later as Associate Professor. In 2011 he was promoted to Full Professor and in 2014 he succeeded Prof. dr. Michael Müller as chair of the Nutrition, Metabolism and Genomics group. Since 2019, Dr. Kersten has been Chairman of the Division of Human Nutrition and Health. Dr. Kersten also has an appointment as a Courtesy Professor within the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University (USA).

Research in the group covers the following main themes: 1. Molecular regulation of lipid metabolism. The aim is to further understand the molecular regulation of lipid metabolism in liver, adipose tissue, and intestine, partly via elucidating the functional role of specific genes. 2. Immunometabolism , adipose tissue, and metabolic health. The aim is to better understand the role of adipose tissue and the immune system in metabolic dysregulation caused by (over)nutrition and characterize the underlying mechanisms using molecular and omics tools. 3. Nutritional regulation of intestinal health. The focus is on the nutritional programming and systems biology of intestinal health, with special interest in dietary fiber, the gut microbiome, transcriptomics, and epigenetics. Overall, research is geared towards expanding our knowledge of the molecular physiology of nutrient metabolism in health and metabolic diseases and elucidating what key regulatory pathways go awry during disease development and aging.