Ben (Willem) Mol is Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Monash University. Ben is focused on the organisation of multi-centric evaluative research in Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Fertility. The research is focused mainly upon everyday practices. As a Professor, Ben considers his most important task to be the stimulation and innovation of evaluative research in Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Reproductive Medicine.
Ben studied Medicine at the University of Amsterdam. From 1993 to 1997, he worked in the department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the AMC. In 1999 he obtained his doctorate with honours at the Faculty of Medicine of the UvA with his dissertation entitled Evaluating the effectiveness of diagnostic tests: tubal subfertility and ectopic pregnancy. Between 1997 and 2003 he was trained as a Gynaecologist at the University Medical Centre (Universitair Medisch Centrum) in Utrecht. Since 2002, he has been a Senior Researcher in the department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the AMC. From 2003 to 2007, he worked as a Gynaecologist-Perinatologist at the MMC in Eindhoven, and between 2007-2013 in the Academic Medical Centre, Amsterdam. Ben was instrumental in initiating the Dutch consortium for Research in Women’s health, in which 70 hospitals collaborate in multicenter trials. Main topics that were evaluated were timing and methods of induction of labour, prevention of preterm birth with pessary, tocolysis, indications for IVF, tubal flushing for infertility and treatment of menorrhagia. The trial initiative has been incorporated by the Dutch Society for Obstetrics and Gynaecology and is supported by the Dutch national funder and the Dutch health insurance companies. In 2010, Ben co-initiated the Global Obstetric Network GOnet that aims to better coordinate global efforts in clinical effectiveness research.
Ben came to Australia in 2014 and started at Monash in 2018. Ben holds an NHMRC practitioner fellowship, which was awarded as the highest ranked application in 2014. During his time in Australia, he developed extensive relations with Asian universities. Ben has mentored >100 PhD students and published >1000 papers, many in high impact journals as NEJM, Lancet, JAMA, PLOSmedicine and BMJ. A publication in Nature acknowledged Ben as one the most prolific medical scientists. Ben is since 2014 the world’s most published author in Obstetrics/Gynaecology.
His ambitions at Monash are to translate the findings of clinical practice, to initiate a Victorian clinical trial network in women’s health research, to extend his global collaborations and to mentor junior colleagues in these ambitions. His professional adage is ‘A day without randomisation is a day without progress.’.
