Leon J de Windt received a Master's degree in Molecular Biology from Utrecht University in 1994 and a Ph.D. in Cardiovascular Physiology from Maastricht University in 1999. He carried out his postdoctoral studies in the laboratory of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Jeffery D. Molkentin at Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati, OH, USA, as an American Heart Association Fellow. In 2002, he was appointed group leader at the Hubrecht Institute in Utrecht, an Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. In 2008, he was appointed Associate Professor at the University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands, and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. In 2010, he moved to Maastricht, where he was appointed as Professor of Molecular Cardiovascular Biology at the Department of Cardiology, CARIM School for Cardiovascular Diseases, Faculty of Health, Medicine and  Life Sciences, Maastricht University. His research aims to understand how programs of cellular differentiation and morphogenesis are affected in the processes leading to heart failure. Chronic heart failure is a progressive disorder of the heart muscle that affects all vital organs, ultimately resulting in loss of quality of life, frequent hospitalizations, and a reduced life span. His ultimate goal is to dissect the genomic pathways of heart disease and transform this information to devise the next generation of pharmacological therapies for acquired heart disease in humans.