Rob Coppes did a PhD in Molecular Pharmacology and a post-doc in radiobiology. He became a full professor of Radiotherapy with focus on the radiation biology of normal tissues in 2012. In 2015 he received the Bacq-and-Alexander Award of the European Radiation Research Society to an outstanding European researcher to recognize achievements in the field of radiation research. He serve(s)(d) as editor or scientific board member of several international journals, societies and institutes. He has a strong background in cell biology and radiation biology with specific training in clinical radiation biology. He has experience in clinical radiobiology related oncology and has led multiple EU and Dutch research consortia and other research projects and extensively participates in training and teaching in radiobiology. His research focused on the response of normal tissues to radiation. His lab showed novel mechanisms and developed novel tools to investigate normal tissue responses and showed regional differences in normal tissues such as spinal cord, lungs and salivary gland, challenging the existing concepts and models and rethinking the best ways to plan patients for radiotherapy. In the salivary gland a completely different mechanism responsible for the regional differences in radiosensitivity of the tissue was found. It was shown that the tissues stem cells are not equally divided over the tissue and found a high accumulation of these cells in a specific area of the gland. A relation was found between the sensitive area and the stem cell response using novel by his group developed techniques. His lab was the first lab to develop methods of using tissue and tumour derived organoids to study the response of stem cells to different types of radiation. A first clinical trial using salivary gland stem cell transplantation is ongoing. Currently, attempts are made to investigate the FLASH effect using tumor and normal tissue stem cell derived organoids.