Diederik Gommers (Gorkum, 1964) is an intensivist and head of the I.C. of the Erasmus MC in Rotterdam. He grew up in Udenhout, in a family with three younger brothers. He studied medicine in Ghent and then at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, where he graduated in 1994. He was trained as an intensivist at the AMC in Amsterdam. He obtained his doctorate in 1998, after which he was appointed professor by special appointment at Erasmus University in 2014. He has published more than 200 scientific articles on ventilation, sepsis and the use of AI in the ICU. In 2020, together with virologist Marion Koopmans, he received the Machiavelli Prize for making science about the coronavirus accessible to a wide audience.