Name Responsible Activity "Ecology, Evolution and Biodiversity Conservation" "Robby Stoks" "LABORATORY OF AQUATIC ECOLOGY (F. Ollevier, L. Brendonck, L. De Meester, R. Stoks, F. Volckaert) - Aquatic ecology and biodiversity including population genetics & evolutionary genetics of aquatic vertebrates & invertebrates. - Fish diseases (parasites, bacteria) and aquatic microbiology. - Management of aquatic ecosystems (trophical cascade) in relation with eutrophication. - Ecophysiology related with aquaculture, reproduction. - Aquatic ecotoxicology : as well fundamental aspects as their application in aquaculture and evironmental management. - Projects of applied hydrobiology are run in Africa (Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya), Asia (China, Vietnam) and South-America (Ecuador, Chili, Bolivia). LABORATORY FOR ENTOMOLOGY (J. Billen) Morphology and ultrastructure of exocrine glands in social insects, phylogeny of the Formicidae, chemical analysis of pheromone-producing glands in social insects, communication and pheromones in social insects, behavioural study of reproduction and dominance in ants. LABORATORY FOR COMPARATIVE ANATOMY AND BIODIVERSITY (K. W outers, W. Van Neer, J. Snoeks) - Systematic revisions of African and South-East Asian freshwater fishes. This research is focused on the economically important fish families such as the Cichlidae (tilapias and several groups from the East African Lakes), Clariidae, Schilbeidae, Bagridae (Chrysichtys) and Mastacembelidae. - Biodiversity studies, concentrated on Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, Brazzaville, Ivory Coast and the great East African Lakes (Victoria, Tanganyika and Malawi). - Osteology to elucidate relationships within certain fish groups such as the Polypteridae. - Taxonomic and (paleo)ecological study of ostracodes." "Isotope Geology and Evolution of Paleo-Environmnents" "The group GEOL studies the evolution of the environments throughout Earth history. The topics encompasses paleoclimatic research in the last few million years, essentially by investigating the continental record and second documenting the origins and consequences of major biological and climatic changes throughout geological time. Cratering processes by asteroid and comet impacts on Earth (or other planet) constitutes a major research topic together with the study of meteorites to understand formation and evolution of planetary bodies. The analytical tools used are stable isotope (H, O, C, N) and trace element geochemistry. There is also a growing accent on the use of other isotopes systems such as Cr, Lu-Hf etc. Besides these major research fields, attention is also devoted to Sr-isotope geochemistry, as well as hydrological, biogeochemical and environmental changes. In addition, there is a significant interest in exobiology and the origin of life on Earth and other planetary bodies. In term of research, GEOL emphasizes strong national but especially international collaborations and participates in several large-scale international projects. The analytic approach used by GEOL is unique in Belgium and relies on experimentation and the measurements of isotopic ratios in various materials. The GEOL-ANCH stable isotope laboratory hosted at the VUB contains: 3 Gas Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometers (IRMS) with various peripherals for measurements of H, N, C and O isotopic ratios in rock, fossil, sediment, water and organic matter. Thanks to a 2010, Hercules financing a Picarro Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy for D/H and 18O/16O analyses in waters and liquids was added in 2011. These stable isotopes are powerful tracer-tools, with a broad range of application in geology, hydrology, biology, environmental sciences, chemistry, archeology, often resulting in challenging inter-university projects and international collaborations. Stable isotope fractionation allows identifying and quantifying past climatic changes, or physico-chemical modification affecting low and high temperature mineralogical or chemical systems. Their signatures can also be used as a tracer of various processes in hydrogeology, cosmochemistry, archeology or biogeochemistry. This methodology is used to investigate selected ""events"" throughout Earth history and is often coupled with geochronology (Ar-Ar, U-Th or Rb/Sr methods) to place the observed changes in a rigorous time frame. Together with Ghent University, Analytical Chemistry and Dept. of Geology at the KULeuven, GEOL is a partner in the Multi-Collector Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (2007 ZWAP financing) for isotopic ratios of non-gaseous elements installed in a state of the art laboratory at Ghent University." "Laboratory for Human Evolutionary Genetics" "Toomas Kivisild" "Our research group is interested in human evolution and evolutionary population genetics in the broadest sense. We work on questions relating global genetic population structure with evolutionary processes such as selection, drift, migrations and admixture. We use evidence from modern and ancient genomes to study genetic changes taking place over time and space. " "Department of Human Genetics" "Patrick Callaerts" "The core business of the Center for Human Genetics is human and developmental genetics, neurogenetics and cancer genetics. For this reason we have chosen to structure the department around these three pillars by means of research programmes, headed by a program director." "Human Genome Laboratory" "The mission of the Human Genome Laboratory is to detect, characterize and treat clinically important mutations. The strategy of the group is based on the mining of the unique patient material available through our collaboration with the clinical groups of the Center for Human Genetics, KULeuven.This group focuses on three different lines of investigations. The first aims at the characterization of molecular processes involved in the genesis and evolution of cancer. The second at the identification of genes or mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of intellectual disability (ID). The third aims at the development and study of chromosomal vectors for transgenesis. All strategies originate from the identification of aberrations in chromosomes in constitutional or acquired disease, depend on the use of a common ‘genomics’ toolkit, and use extensively the resources provided by the Human Genome Project." "Centre for Computational Linguistics, Psycholinguistics and Sociolinguistics (CLiPS)" "Reinhild Vandekerckhove" "The research of CLiPS is interdisciplinary between linguistics, psychology, and computer science (Artificial Intelligence). Current research can be divided into three main areas: Psycholinguistics, Language Acquisition (coordinator: Steven Gillis). The main research topic is how very young children learn the language they hear. This process actually starts before babies use conventional words and phrases. That is why we study babies' vocalizations from birth onwards, focusing on how they become more and more 'word-like'. Once they start using words, we analyze the phonological development (the sound and syllable patterns words consist of, stress and intonation, 'speech errors') and morphophonological development (for instance, how do they learn diminutives or plurals?), and syntactic development (e.g., how do they learn the basic word order of Dutch?). Moreover, we study how young children learn the meanings of words and how they know how to use these new words correctly. A major area of research in language acquisition is the extent to which the language environment of the child provides enough information with which to learn language. At present we have an outspoken interest in language acquisition in children with different degrees of hearing: normally hearing children's language acquisition is compared with hearing impaired children with a conventional hearing aid and deaf children with 'received hearing' due to cochlear implantation. The research mainly focuses on the acquisition of Dutch as a first language. But there is also a firm emphasis on crosslinguistic studies in which the acquisition of particular phenomena is studied in typologically diverse languages. Psycholinguistics, Language Processing (coordinator: Dominiek Sandra). The focus is on the nature of the mental representations and processes underpinning online language use in experienced language users, more particularly in the domains of reading and spelling. In the study of reading our attention is primarily directed towards visual word recognition. The issues that we have addressed in recent years concern the role of morphological structure in lexical access and the question whether lexical access in bilinguals is language-selective or not. These topics are studied in reaction time experiments, using a variety of experimental paradigms. In our study of the spelling process we attempt to explain why descriptively simple, rule-governed word forms (Dutch verb forms) give rise to so many spelling errors among experienced spellers. Experiments and error corpora form two sources of empirical data. The central explanatory concepts in this research line are occurrence frequency of orthographic patterns at the lexical level and analogical processing at the sublexical level. Finally, we study the possibility of explaining language processing in morphosyntactic and syntactic domains in terms of exemplar-based analogy instead of rule application. Here, we rely on experimental and modeling work. Computational Linguistics (coordinator: Walter Daelemans). Basic research in Computational Linguistics at CLiPS is concerned with the study of computational methods for the representation, acquisition, and use of language knowledge. We focus on the application of statistical and machine learning methods, trained on corpus data, to explain human language acquisition and processing data, and to develop automatic text understanding systems that are accurate, efficient, and robust enough to be used in practical applications. We develop specific machine learning algorithms suited for the properties of language data (few regularities, many irregularities and exceptions), and develop new methodologies for simulation of these language data. Our strategic research is in the domain of Language Technology, the development of language processing tools to alleviate information and translation bottlenecks. Research focus here has been on text analytics (extracting knowledge from unstructured text data). Recently, the group has developed research initiatives on language technology for African languages, and on Digital Humanities (especially the areas of computational stylometry and language technology for the study of old variants of Dutch)." "Department of Philosophy and moral sciences" "Martin CommersJoke MeheusGertrudis Van de VijverErik Weber" "The Department of Philosophy and Moral Science carries out research in three areas: (1) Logic, knowledge and philosophy of science: specific scientific philosophical problems in the various scientific disciplines (biology, biomedical sciences, history, psychology, social sciences, mathematics), and development / application of formal logic systems. (2) Theoretical and practical ethics and philosophical anthropology: research into moral epistemology, moral emotions, the origin of moral judgments, and the acceptance of evolution theory, and research within the various areas of bioethics, the sexual and relationship ethics and economic and social ethics. (3) History of philosophy: interwoven with research into the history of Christianity (especially in the ancient and medieval period) and to the history of the sciences (especially in modern times)." "Marine Lab" "Marine Jean Christophe" "Analysing pathways that underlie the genesis, progression and maintenance of cancer, understanding how the genes that are implicated in cancer control fundamental cellular processes in normal cells, understand the mechanisms by which non-mutational (i.e. epigenetic and post-transcriptional) events interfere with these natural processes to bring about tumour development and to affect therapy outcome, research on concept of aberrant RNA biology in cancer and the targeting of cancer cell-specific malignant RNAs." "Institute for European Studies" "The key elements for the focus of our research are the following: * Role of the EU as a global actor * Interaction between the internal and external dimensions of EU policies This focus can be described in the following terms: Since the early 1970s, in parallel with the ongoing processes of deepening European integration and enlargement, the EU has increasingly asserted its role as a global actor in the broader international arena. Conversely, the internal development of the Union and its policies is to an ever more significant extent being influenced by global events and processes, such as economic globalisation and the changing environment of international security. The Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe aims, inter alia, to consolidate and further expand the EU's global role by providing a stronger institutional foundation for the Union's external action in such areas as common foreign and security, common commercial policy, development cooperation policy, economic, financial and technical cooperation with third countries other than developing countries and humanitarian aid. The Constitution establishes ambitious objectives for the EU ""in its relations with the wider world"", namely to ""uphold and promote its values and interests"", to ""contribute to peace, security, the sustainable development of the Earth, solidarity and mutual respect among peoples, free and fair trade, eradication of poverty and the protection of human rights"", and ""to the strict observance and the development of international law"". It sees the EU as an actor with a global mission, with ""responsibilities towards future generations and the Earth"", as ""a special area of human hope"" with a dedication ""to strive for peace, justice and solidarity throughout the world"". Against this background, the study of EU institutions, policies and legal framework can no longer adequately be undertaken in isolation from the broader international context. The major focus of IES research therefore is on the study of EU institutions, policies and law within the context of globalisation and international and comparative law and politics. Research projects share a common focus on the role of the EU as a global actor and on the interaction between the internal and external dimensions of EU policies and between EU policies and the policies of other international organisations. To this end, the Institute aims to develop an interdisciplinary approach, involving not only legal and institutional expertise but also economic, social and political analysis. It focuses on forward-looking research and aims to produce policy-relevant results of interest to national and European decision-makers and the international academic community.""" "Vanderhaeghen Lab" "Pierre Vanderhaeghen" "Understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the development and evolution of the cerebral cortex, from stem cells to neuronal circuits, from mouse to man, in health and disease."