Antwerp Metropolitan Area
Part-time Professor at UGent where he is head of the laboratory for computational genomics and bioinformatics (Biobix). In 1997 he was co-founder and director of Devgen, a biotechnology company which had a successful IPO in June 2005. He worked as a consultant for various biotech, agro and pharma companies. Specialties: epigenetics, biotech, translational medicine, bioinformatics, ICT, pharmacogenomics, eHealth, biobanking, omics, biomarker research
The core competences of BIOBIX (within the Department of Molecular Biotechnology) are bioinformatics, data-integration and analysis, particularly in combination with high-throughput applications. Based on these competences, BIOBIX obtained ample expertise in epigenetic research, more specifically DNA-methylation and telomere length profiling, but also histone modification and non-coding RNA analyses. Within BIOBIX there is a general focus on systems biology and comparative genomics reflected in different supported technologies: next-generation sequencing, NMR-based metabonomics, MS-based proteomics, proteogenomics, transcriptomics, phylogenetic footprinting, heterogenous data-integration statistics, ncRNA detection and target prediction, selection of novel targets, etc.. These technologies are applied in many different disease areas, but with cancer and (cardiovascular) aging as two most important targets. Our lab has also extensive IT knowledge in setting up high performance computer environments and is one of the few European labs actively mirroring all available sequence data on dedicated hardware using in-house software.