Rob Driessen

Assistant Professor

Rob G.H. Driessen studied Medicine at Maastricht University and graduated in 2006. He trained in Cardiology at Maastricht UMC+ and Zuyderland Medical Center and was registered as a cardiologist in 2013. He subsequently completed a fellowship in Intensive Care Medicine and has been registered as a cardiologist-intensivist since 2016. Since then, he has worked as a staff cardiologist-intensivist at Maastricht UMC+.

In 2017, Rob started his PhD research on sepsis, inflammation and cardiovascular complications in critically ill patients under the supervision of Prof. dr. Iwan van der Horst. He obtained his PhD in 2022 with the thesis 'Sepsis in the Intensive Care Unit: from definitions to outcomes'. His subsequent research has increasingly focused on cardiovascular monitoring and cardiopulmonary interactions in critically ill patients, combining clinical data, physiological measurements and advanced monitoring techniques.

Rob is currently Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences (FHML) of Maastricht University and combines clinical work in Cardiology and Intensive Care with translational and data-driven research. His research interests include hemodynamic monitoring, cardiopulmonary interactions, right ventricular function, cardiovascular data science, and alarm fatigue in critically ill patients. He is particularly interested in using routinely available clinical data, physiological signals and imaging to improve monitoring, phenotyping and clinical decision-making in critically ill patients.

His current research activities include several interconnected research lines. These include the study of cardiopulmonary interactions and right ventricular function during mechanical ventilation and PEEP, cardiovascular data science and artificial intelligence using large intensive care datasets, including automated assessment of coronary artery calcification on CT imaging, and alarm fatigue and alarm management in critical care. In addition, he remains involved in research on sepsis and rapid molecular diagnostics for bloodstream infections.

Rob currently supervises several PhD projects covering these research areas, including projects on cardiopulmonary interactions and hemodynamic monitoring, cardiovascular data science in the ICU, coronary artery calcification and AI-based analysis of intensive care CT datasets, and alarm fatigue. He has also been involved in the Maastricht Intensive Care COVID (MaastrICCht) cohort, which has generated multiple publications on cardiovascular and systemic consequences of severe COVID-19.

In 2025, Rob received a Maastricht University FHML Starter Grant to further develop research on hemodynamic monitoring, cardiovascular data and right ventricular failure in critically ill patients. His overall research aim is to bridge clinical intensive care medicine and cardiovascular science by integrating physiology, monitoring, imaging and clinical data to better understand critically ill patients and improve individualized monitoring and treatment.