Maroeska M. Rovers was born in Doetinchem, the Netherlands in 1973. She completed her MSc in Biomedical Health Sciences in 1996, and her PhD on ‘Otitis media with effusion in infants: the effects of ventilation tubes’ in 2000. She is currently Professor of Evidence-Based Surgery at Radboud University Medical Centre, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Furthermore, she is a member of the council of the IDEAL collaboration, a group of leading surgeons and methodologist whom aim to improve the quality of research in surgery.