Dirk was elected as a council member for the American Society of Matrix Biology (ASMB). He will serve from 2018 – 2021 and is very excited “to actively contribute to the growing community of extracellular matrix biologists and to promote the mission of the ASMB.” The extracellular matrix is indeed much more than an inert collection of fibrils!
“Nature is nowhere accustomed more openly to display her secret mysteries than in cases where she shows traces of her workings apart from the beaten path; nor is there any better way to advance the proper practice of medicine than to give our minds to the discovery of the usual law of nature by the careful investigation of cases of rarer forms of disease. For it has been found in almost all things, that what they contain of useful or of applicable nature, is hardly perceived unless we are deprived of them, or they become deranged in some way.”
-William Harvey (Physician-Scientist), 1578-1657