I consider myself a passionate academic clinician with a focus on complex cardiovascular pathology and extracorporeal life support. My professional enthusiam is driven by the ability that we, as intensivists, can provide the best possible care for our patients, when we do our utmost to understand complex pathophysiology at the bedside by trying to gain mechanistic insights in every individual. This individualized-patient-care concept has been the ultimate goal of my PhD thesis entitled ‘Cardiac mechanomyopathy: integrating the picture from cell to beating heart' (Maastricht University, 2008). Here, insights deduced from molecular biology, cellular electrophysiology, echocardiography and mathematical modeling have been used to enhance our understanding on mechano-electrical phenomena in complex heart failure. This basic and translational scientific work was the impetus to proceed in the clinical arena, become intensivist while focussing on extracorporeal life support and MCS.