Bioinformatics and AI March

Joost Schymkowitz is een Belgische moleculair bioloog en onderzoeker aan de KU Leuven. Samen met Frederic Rousseau is hij groepsleider bij het VIB Switch Laboratory, KU Leuven.

Frederic obtained his PhD in 2001 from the University of Cambridge (UK) where he worked on mechanisms of protein folding under the mentorship of Laura Itzhaki, in the laboratory of Sir Alan Fersht.

Frederic's postdoctoral work took place at the EMBL in Heidelberg (Germany) in the laboratory of Luis Serrano, where he contributed to the development of several structural modelling tools to predict mutational effect on protein stability. These tools are widely used throughout the biotech and pharmaceutical industry.

Frederic is currently a full professor and one half of a group leader duo running the SWITCH Laboratory at the KU Leuven-VIB Centre for Brain & Disease Research, (Belgium).

Joris R. Vermeesch, Ph.D. Ir, is chair of the department of human genetics and heading the Constitutional Cytogenetics unit of the Center of Human Genetics. He is coordinating the genomic core Leuven. The laboratory has been pioneering applications for genome wide genetic analyses for preimplantation, prenatal and postnatal diagnosis. The laboratory has a special focus on structural variation detection and studies the mechanisms underlying chromosomal instability and rearrangements. He developed methods for single cell CNV detection and addresses questions about the origins of chromosomal rearrangements and genomic instability by the genetic analysis of IVF embryos. The laboratory developed and translated novel methods for non-invasive prenatal and cancer testing. In collaboration with clinical geneticists, the laboratory actively seeks to define the molecular causes of developmental, mental and behavioural disturbances. The group invests in the new generation of sequencing technologies and is involved in research enabling whole genome analyses. The group is partner of the SymbioSys, a KULeuven center of excellence in computational biology and he is founder of the Leuven institute of genomics and Society (LIGAS). Prof. Vermeesch has published over 300 papers, H-index 51 and founder of a spin-off company Cartagenia.