Karlijn van Wessem is a trauma surgeon at the University Medical Centre Utrecht in the Netherlands. She earned her medical degree from Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands and completed her General Surgery residency in Rotterdam. She later sub-specialised in Trauma Surgery in Newcastle, Australia, and completed an orthopaedic trauma fellowship at the University Medical Centre Utrecht. Since 2010, she has been a consultant trauma surgeon there. In 2013, she earned a PhD on polytrauma. She is a Fellow of multiple surgical boards and has many publications on trauma, shock, resuscitation, and inflammatory complications in translational and clinical research.