Bioinformatics and AI

K. Marchal obtained a degree in Bioscience Engineering KU Leuven, Belgium (1990-1995) and obtained a PhD in Molecular Microbiology in 1999 (FWO fellow). From 1999-2004, she was postdoctoral fellow FWO in ESAT-SCD (KU Leuven, Faculty of Engineering) and contributed to set up one of the first Belgian bioinformatics labs. From 2004-2014 she was affiliated to the KU Leuven, first as assistant and later as associate professor (Fac of Bioscience Engineering). In this period she obtained in 2000 the DSM award for PhD research, year: 2000, and in 2002 the Two yearly Siemens award for Medical bioinformatics: interdisciplinary crossroads.

In 2011, she joined UGent (Fac of Sciences), first as associate (2011-2021) and since 2021 as full professor in bioinformatics. From 2015-2018 she was Extraordinary professor, Faculty of Science/ Department of Genetics/ University of Pretoria/ South Africa. The interdisciplinary research group of K. Marchal is physically located at IDLab (Fac of Engineering, https://www.ugent.be/ea/idlab/en/members/kathleen-marchal.htm) and currently consists of 6 PhD students and 1 postdoc. The group published more than 220 peer reviewed publications, of which >50 as last author, H-index= 46 (publons https://publons.com/researcher/1748655/kathleen-marchal/publications/ and https://biblio.ugent.be/person/352760E4-F0EE-11E1-A9DE-61C894A0A6B4/bof?span=all).

K. Marchal supervised 26 PhDs as main promotor and 8 as copromoter, graduating from different faculties (faculty of Bio-science engineering, faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Sciences and Medical faculty in both KU Leuven and UGhent ). She was Member of the examination commission of external PhD students (21, outside UGhent since 2011).

K. Marchal has always been interested in crossing the borders of disciplines. She strongly believes in the potential of transferring knowledge between application domains and in developing generic strategies. This explains why she has been working on different topics and model systems and has spent considerable effort in bringing together research consortia and writing project applications with researchers from very different disciplines.

K. Marchal was responsible for the set up and organization of the interfaculty Master of Science in bioinformatics at both KU Leuven (2008-2011) and UGhent (2015-). She still is chair of the educational commission of this interfaculty Master of Science in Bioinformatics at UGent and heavily involved in its daily organization.

K. Marchal has been teaching from 2006-1013 several bioinformatics related courses at KU Leuven in the Bachelor in Bioscience Engineering and Master in Bioinformatics. Currently she is teaching at UGhent the courses Bioinformatics (Bachelor of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, 100 students, 4 ECTs), Biostatistics (Master of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, 100 students, 1.5 ECTS, partim), and Integrative Biology (Master of Bioinformatics, 30 students, 3 ECTs). She has been given talks for larger audiences, courses for the Institute for Continuing Education in Science, (UGent in 2001, 2003, 2006).

Expertise: AI in the domain of bioinformatics (digital pathology, graph based analysis, generative AI for protein design) (see publications)

Experienced professor skilled in Life Sciences, with core focus on Structural Bioinformatics, Molecular Modeling and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR).

Biochemist and Computational Biologist, interested in tumour evolution, single-molecule multi-omics, and AI.

While my Ph.D. focused on retroviral integration targeting, drug discovery and chromatin readers, my postdoctoral research focused on cancer 'omics. I developed novel computational approaches and leverage large scale pan-cancer data as well as focused single-cell 'omics data to shed light onto tumor heterogeneity and evolution.

I currently head the Integrative Genomics Lab at the VIB – KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology, where we aim to:

• deliver innovative tools and analysis pipelines for single-molecule multi-omics
• push these techniques to the single-cell and spatial levels
• scrutinise emergent tumour biology such as extrachromosomal DNA, RNA editing and translation.
• leverage multi-region and time series data to paint a multi-omics picture of tumour evolution