Paper summaries & Press releases


Big Bang magazine •

Mapping trees | Kim Calders and Kenneth Cools reflect on their joint scientific and creative journey

Kim Calders and his team at Ghent University study forest dynamics. They do so by making 3D scans of trees across the globe. With these scans, they create ‘digital forest twins’, which in turn enable the researchers to use satellite data to monitor forest disturbances from space. Apart from academics, the project team also includes Kenneth Cools, whose illustrations and animations promote and disseminate the research goals and findings.
Photonics Media •

Programmable Photonic Chips Adapt PICs to Multiple Futures

While electronics are perfect for performing fast calculations, photonics are ideal for moving information around. A major drawback of the latter, however, is the slow and costly development process for new photonic integrated chips, hampering their widespread use. If photonic chips could be reprogrammed for different applications, this would drastically lower development costs, shorten the time to market, and improve the sustainability of their use.
VIB Blog •

Better, cheaper, easier, HyDrop

A Leuven research team led by Stein Aerts and the single-cell experts at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research has developed HyDrop: an optimized open-source protocol using dissolvable hydrogel beads. HyDrop reduces both the cost and labor intensity of existing open-source single-cell sequencing methods and offers improved sensitivity. The new method, published in eLife, will accelerate the implementation of single-cell analysis in a variety of research fields.
VIB Persbericht •

“Yes, we still need animals”

‘Do we still need animals?’ is the provocative title of a meta-analysis on methods and models used in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease research, completed by an interdisciplinary team of researchers at VIB, KU Leuven, imec and VITO. After screening thousands of abstracts and papers, mapping both animal-based and animal-free methods, the authors conclude that calls to halt all animal research are premature, and that a more nuanced approach to monitor animal use is needed to inform policy discu
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Science life

VIB News •

Mini-documentary asks kids what it’s like to have an immune disorder

This week, patient organizations raise awareness for Primary Immune Deficiency, PID for short, a clinical term for hundreds of congenital disorders of the immune system. About 1 in 2000 children and adults have PID and therefore become ill much more often and more seriously than others. A team of Belgian researchers and clinicians wants to improve PID diagnostics and raise awareness for PID. In a new mini-documentary, they bring the story of children and young people with PID and addresses common misconceptions.
The Lancet Neurology •

Dementia and COVID-19: a health and research funding crisis

Neurological research is at a turning point. Emerging technological advances offer opportunities to understand brain function in health and disease in a way no one could have even dreamed of 5 years ago. With these advances, combined with new methods of targeting the brain with antisense therapy or therapeutic antibodies, we stand on the verge of breakthroughs in treating neurological diseases.
BioVox •

Liesbeth Aerts in Sydney - Belgian scientist living abroad

Until August 2017, Liesbeth Aerts lived in Sydney, where she worked as a dementia researcher at the University of New South Wales. She studied bio-engineering and neuroscience (in Belgium and in the UK, respectively) and did a PhD focused on the molecular mechanisms of Parkinson’s disease at VIB/KU Leuven. After a short stint in the US freelancing as a scientific editor, she moved to Sydney in 2015. There, she was involved in several ongoing longitudinal studies assessing cognitive decline in ol
VIB Reporter on the road •

When a 'like' is not enough

When you do research on neurodegenerative diseases as common and devastating as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, it’s easy to pitch your work to a wider audience. Generally speaking, the people I meet are interested in what I do, or at least happy that I am interested in it on their behalf. Most of them are glad to know their tax money is invested in research that can help us understand and (hopefully) eventually cure the illnesses that they or their loved ones may suffer from. Consequently, most of