µNEURO News - 2023

Dr. Ben Jeurissen was awarded a prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant of 2 Million euro by the European Research Council (ERC) for his project ADAMI (A Data-driven Approach to Microstructural Imaging).

Belgium is now officially a member of Euro-BioImaging, the European Research Infrastructure for bio-imaging technologies. With the support of an FWO-International Research Infrastructure Grant awarded to the Flanders BioImaging consortium, this membership will facilitate cross-border imaging collaborations and enable sharing of Flanders' extensive expertise in microscopy and (pre)-clinical imaging.

With spokespersons from two renowned imaging core facilities at the University of Antwerp (Prof. De Vos - Antwerp Centre for Advanced Microscopy and Prof. Stroobants - MICA-BIL Core Facility), this association will consolidate our position in a European context. 

Prof. Rose Bruffaerts (Experimental Neurobiology Unit) was interviewed by EOS magazine to talk about her research on neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal degeneration.

In September, we celebrated the academic career of Prof. Emerita Annemie Van der Linden. 

During the scientific and academic session, an interesting line-up of external speakers and former PhD students gave us an overview of her scientific work, and stories from collaborators all across the world showed us how she left her mark as pioneer in the Molecular Imaging field. Finally, colleagues from the Bio-Imaging lab shared anecdotes from early and recent days, revealing the history behind her leadership of the Bio-Imaging Lab.

We thank Prof. Van der Linden for founding the Bio-Imaging lab and for her important contributions to the University of Antwerp and the Molecular Imaging field.

At the Peripheral Nerve Society Meeting in Copenhagen, the researchers from the Peripheral Neuropathy Research Group received no less than two awards and important recognitions for their work:

• Dr. Jonas Van lent received the Prof. P.K. Thomas Award for best science presentation.
• Prof. Vincent Timmerman received an award and standing ovation for his outstanding contributions to the field of inherited neuropathies.
• 2 out of 3 Science Highlights of the last year were publications by the team:
  • in Nature Cell Biology by Dr. Elias Adriaenssens et al.: Small heat shock proteins operate as molecular chaperones in the mitochondrial intermembrane space
  • in BRAIN by Dr. Jonas Van lent et al.: Downregulation of PMP22 ameliorates myelin defects in iPSC-derived human organoid cultures of CMT1A

Prof. dr. Sarah Weckhuysen has received the UCB Award of the Queen Elisabeth Medical Foundation (GSKE-FMRE) for her team's work on STXBP1-Developmental and Epileptic Encephalopathy (published in Neurology). 

On Rare Disease Day 2023, Prof. Vincent Timmerman received the ‘Vedette 2023’ Award from Spierziekten Vlaanderen vzw, in recognition of his research career focussing on Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and his dedication to making this research understandable for CMT patients.

​​​​Flanders BioImaging, an interuniversity research consortium dedicated to biomedical imaging and advanced light microscopy, has received 4.3M euro of funding in the recent FWO-International Research Infrastructure call.