News

Open acces book: The Science of Citizen Science

Roeland Samson is one of the editors of a new open access book: The Science of Citizen Science. This book is the result of intensive collaboration and exchange within a European network on citizen science. Within this COST-action project more than 100 authors from 24 countries contributed. This Springer book offers higher education institutions the opportunity to reflect on both the substantive contributions to research and the societal added value of citizen science. In addition, the book offers practical support for the implementation of projects and also addresses emerging topics such as Citizen Science and Artificial Intelligence.

  • You can find the new book here.
  • Read the full press release here.


Academic Council for Service to Society Award 2019

Roeland Samson and Sarah Lebeer receive the Academic Council for Service to Society Award from the University of Antwerp for their citizen science projects 'AIRbezen' and 'Ferme Pekes' , together with Ivan Janssens (Knappe k(n)oppen) and Filip Meysman (Curieuzeneuzen). In the 'AIRbezen' project, citizens help to assess local air quality by caring for and sampling a strawberry plant. It started in 2014 in Antwerp and laid the seed for many follow-up projects in Flanders (e.g. AIRbezen East Flanders 2017 and AIRbezen@School 2018) and abroad (e.g. Vigilantes del Cierzo in Spain). In the project 'Ferme pekes' citizens were invited to ferment carrot juice at home, to get an idea of the bacterial composition of fermented carrot juice.

Sander Wuyts laureate for EOS-pipet

April 2019

Sander Wuyts discovered that fermented carrot juice contains a wide variety of lactic acid bacteria, and that these healthy bacteria boost the immune system. For his research, Wuyts enlisted the help of fourteen volunteers, who fermented carrot juice in their own kitchen. Wuyts used their input as a data source.Bacteria in fermented food, such as yoghurt or cheese, are said to be good for one's health. Wuyts' research is an important addition to the limited number of studies that have already been conducted into this.

Archives


December 2013: Double PhD Mariya Petrova

Thursday, December 5th 2013, Mariya Petrova obtained the first double PhD in Bioscience Engineering between KU Leuven and University of Antwerp with Sarah Lebeer (UAntwerpen), Jos Vanderleyden and Jan Balzarini (KU Leuven) as promotors. She defended with success her PhD entitled ‘Molecular and functional studies of lectins in Lactobacillus rhamnosus’. In addition, we were honored that Gregor Reid, one of the world’s best-known experts on probiotics microorganisms, was one of the jury members. He gave a very inspiring talk on “Reprogramming humans - can microbiome and probiotic research achieve it?” on the occasion of the PhD defense of Mariya.

December 2013: Editors' choice in Environmental Pollution

A publication of our research group (Spatial distribution assessment of particulate matter in an urban street canyon using biomagnetic leaf monitoring of tree crown deposited particles) was put in the spotlights in the Editors' choice section of the journal Environmental Pollution and is downloadable for free for one month using this link.

October 2013: Thumbs up for the IGEM team KU Leuven in finals Boston!

A team of sixteen KU Leuven students has earned a spot in the iGEM finals, an international synthetic biology competition being held in Boston from 1-4 November. Among them are three Bachelors in Bioscience Engineering Cell- and Gene Biotechnology from the University of Antwerp, i.e. Pieter De Bruyn, Sylvie Weckx and Sander Wuyts, who currently study for their Masters at KU Leuven. They are supervised by Dr. Ingmar Claes, who is also affiliated to our research group here in Antwerp. Therefore, we will definitely hold thumbs for their final in Boston this weekend.

The iGEM – ‘international Genetically Engineered Machines’ – competition is organised by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). 204 teams from around the world compete. The teams immerse themselves in synthetic biology, the science of manipulating DNA to build or retool living cells for specific tasks.

For more information, check their website.

May 2013: Poster prize Knowledge for Growth congress, Ghent

On may 30, 2013, Serena Moretti obtained the poster prize at the Knowledge for Growth congress in Ghent, with her poster entitled "The secret lives of airborne microbes (pdf_2MB)".

April 2013: Prof.Dr. Sarah Lebeer in UA-Magazine

On April, 2013, our professor of the Laboratory on Applied Microbiology and Immunology, Sarah Lebeer, appeared in the magazine of the University of Antwerp with an article regarding the amount of female professors in the teaching staff of our university. Read it here (pdf_827kB).