Chantal van Opbergen: Full circle at ESC, from researcher to project manager

In this blog, Chantal van Opbergen, PhD, reflects on her return to the European Society for Cardiology (ESC) Congress in Munich from 28-31 August, after being invited to last year’s congress as a cardiology researcher. This time, Chantal was attending in her role as Project Manager, supporting the close of EHRA-PATHS – a Horizon 2020 project led by the ESC.

Pictured: Chantal van Opbergen, PhD, Project Manager.

Back at the ESC Congress, in a different role

Last weekend I was in Munich for the EHRA-PATHS closing reception. The timing wasn’t a coincidence: the project’s five-year journey is coming to an end right alongside the ESC Congress 2026, so I got to be there as the project reached the finish line, while also taking in the congress over the same weekend.

EHRA-PATHS set out to tackle a problem that’s often overlooked: older patients with atrial fibrillation (AF), the most common heart rhythm disorder, are almost never dealing with just that one condition. Most are juggling several health issues at once, often taking a long list of medications, and seeing different doctors who rarely talk to each other about the same patient. The project looked at data from more than 22,500 elderly AF patients to understand these patterns, identify where care was falling short, and build new ways of organising care around the patient that across very different healthcare systems. Getting there took fourteen partners from eleven different European countries coordinated by the European Society of Cardiology, with Catalyze on board as a partner since 2021, supporting the project management.

The research that shaped my path

It’s not my first time at ESC Congress, either. Last year I was in Madrid, invited to give a talk on the mechanisms of cardiac arrhythmias in Arrhythmogenic Cardiomyopathy, a topic I studied for years, during my PhD and Postdoc training. ACM is a rare genetic heart disease that often affects young people and can cause sudden death during exercise or sport. It’s devastating for carriers of the disease, and beyond lifestyle advice, there’s still no cure. I spent years trying to unravel the mechanisms behind the disease and bring the field closer to therapies. Part of what motivated me through those years of research goes back about a decade: my cousin passed away suddenly in his sleep at 26 years old, from what later turned out to be a genetic heart rhythm disorder. That loss made it painfully clear how devastating an event like this is for everyone left behind.

That research also took me to New York City, where I spent five years at an excellent research group at NYU Langone Medical Center. There, I had the chance to collaborate with a pharmaceutical company on a gene therapy approach for ACM, the kind of collaboration that doesn’t happen everywhere, and one that taught me as much about translating science into something usable as any experiment did. By the time I moved back to the Netherlands, that project had progressed into a Phase 1 clinical trial. Watching years of preclinical work actually reach patients was one of the most meaningful moments of my career, and it shapes how I work now.

From researcher to project manager

When I sit across from a client trying to bring a therapy or application closer to the clinic, I understand how much has gone into reaching that point, and how much work is often still ahead. That’s a big part of why I made the shift into project management. Years of research taught me to manage budgets, keep projects on track against tight deadlines, and coordinate between researchers, clinicians, industry and patient organisations, skills that apply just as well to other people’s projects. As a Project Manager at Catalyze, I get to put them to use in the same field I’ve spent my career in, while also supporting scientists working on therapies that can genuinely save lives.

Bringing EHRA-PATHS to a close

Day to day, that also means diving into the details, like organising meetings, tracking progress, and preparing reports for the European Commission. But what I love most is the bigger picture – making sure everyone involved actually understands each other, and giving them the time and space to focus on the science. Right now, that work is centred on bringing EHRA-PATHS to a close. Over the next couple of months, we’ll pull together the final report for the European Commission: a technical report capturing the project’s achievements and its expected impact, alongside a financial report bringing together the final numbers from all fourteen partners. But it’s more than paperwork. This also marks the end of a collaboration that has run for five years and brings the project’s clinical study to a close. And while this chapter is closing, the hope is that it’s not the end of the collaboration itself, but a foundation the partners can keep building on for years to come.

This weekend was a full circle moment in more ways than one. As a researcher, I was deeply focused on basic science, chasing the mechanisms behind a disease at the molecular level. Now, at Catalyze, I get to help other scientists take that work further, supporting them as they move their innovations into applications that help patients.

Learn more about Project Management at Catalyze

Visit the EHRA-PATHS website