APH researcher Heleen Riper (Professor eMental-Health at VU Amsterdam) will receive a honorary doctoral degree from the Faculty of Human Sciences of the University of Bern, Switzerland on December 4th 2021 during the Dies Natalis of this university.

She will obtain this degree for her lifelong academic endevours in the domain of digital mental health care with the aim to increase access to mental health care services, improve the clinical and cost-effectiveness of these services as well as the implementation of these services on a large and international scale.

She as been the principle investigator of over 50 national and European funded research projects and has been involved as supervisor in over 40 Ph’d trajectories. She has published about 350 peer reviewed (inter)national papers and has co-founded the International Society for Research on Internet as well as Internet Interventions journal. Since 2021 she is the chief editor of Digital Mental Health of the Frontiers of Psychiatry Journal.

Currently, Heleen holds a full professorship at the VU University of Amsterdam, a honorary professorship at the University of Southern Denmark (Centre of Telepsychiatry) and a visiting professorship at the University of Turku, Faculty of Medicine, Dept. of Psychiatry. In 2020 she has been ranked by the Web of Science™ in the top of 1% mostly cited researchers in her cross-sectional domain.