Tessa Roseboom, Ph.D., is a professor of Early Development and Health at the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She is fascinated by the concept that an individual's experience in very early life affects his or her health throughout life. This concept was the central theme of her Ph.D. thesis, describing the effects of prenatal exposure to the Dutch famine on health in later life.

She has been the principal investigator of the Dutch famine birth cohort study since 1998, and as such has attracted (inter)national funding for several rounds of data collection among over a thousand participants and their offspring in this unique study, that resulted in more than seventy papers. Dr. Roseboom is one of the AMC principal investigators and head of the developmental origins of health and disease research group. Her research focuses on the fundamental biological processes that underlie 'developmental programming' as well as studies of contemporary pregnancies (including lifestyle interventions before pregnancy, assisted reproduction techniques, hyperemesis gravidarum) that ultimately may lead to preventive strategies that aim to prevent disease in generations to come.

Her work has attracted international media attention (including coverage on National Geographic, BBC Horizon, Time magazine, New York Times and Science). In 2009, she was nominated for the Academic Year Prize, and in 2010 she published the book "Babies of the hungerwinter, the unexpected legacy of undernutrition." Dr. Roseboom is Europe Representative on the Board of the Society of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease.