Trudy van der Weijden received her medical degree in 1989 and certified as epidemiologist. In 2005, she was appointed as Program Leader of the research program 'Implementation of evidence' in the School Care and Public Health Research Institute (CAPHRI) of Maastricht University, and in 2010 as full professor in Implementation of Clinical Practice Guidelines at the department of Family Medicine. Her research has a specific focus on patient perspectives and patient participation in medical decision making where the tension is felt between standardising work (the application of guidelines) and patient-centred work (the preferences of the patient in the context of the consultation). In 1997 she received the CaRe Award 1997, the dissertation award of the Netherlands School of Primary Care Research. In 2010 she was awarded with a ZonMW (Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development) award for the IMPALA project “Shared Decision Making in lifestyle counseling”. In 2011 she chaired the International Conference on Shared Decision Making in Maastricht. She has (co-)authored over 260 international scientific papers in peer reviewed international journals. She has successfully supervised 38 doctoral graduate students.