Projects
Coupled Corrosion-Mechanical Assessment of Cracked Critical Zones of Reinforced Concrete Members KU Leuven
Much of the critical infrastructure in the western world, and elsewhere, was built in the 1970s and 80s. As a result, in the coming decade a large number of bridges, tunnels, and other important structures will enter a critical age of 50 years, typically linked to significant levels of corrosion and deterioration. Therefore, it becomes increasingly important to be able to accurately assess the safety and remaining lifetime of existing ...
The standard solar flare model: reloaded! KU Leuven
Solar flares represent the most energetic explosions in our heliosphere and they emit copious amounts of electromagnetic radiation. The standard solar flare model in solar and high energy astrophysics textbooks, is a cartoon of all physical ingredients: magnetic fields that change connectivity, plasma dynamics, charged particle acceleration, and both thermal and non-thermal (e.g. bremsstrahlung) radiative processes. While these ingredients ...
Linking human neuronal maturation and neurodevelopment diseases. KU Leuven
Neurodevelopment diseases such as intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorders remain difficult to treat because the underlying mechanisms remain largely unknown. However it has remained almost impossible to study experimentally these diseases in the human species at the neuronal level, given the relative inaccessibility of live human neuronal material. We have recently developed an innovative model of human neuronal development in ...
Impact of transplanted juvenile human cortical neurons on plasticity of adult mouse cortical circuits KU Leuven
Neural plasticity is greatest during development, but decreases into adulthood, and being able to reverse this timeline would have major implications for treating brain diseases. In some instances, such as transplantation of embryonic neurons in the adult brain, individual neurons recapitulate early development within a mature host. In these cases, plasticity of existing circuits appears to increase, but the underlying mechanisms remain ...
Coastal marsh resilience to sea level rise: a field, flume and modelling study on the role of bio-geomo hic self-organization. University of Antwerp
Fulvestrant in gynecological cancers that are potentially hormone sensitive: the FUCHSia study KU Leuven
Here, we aim to set up a Phase II, multicenter study to test the efficacy of Fulvestrant in patients with ER-positive low-grade gynecological cancers. Fulvestrant is an anti-ER drug already approved for ER-positive metastatic breast cancer in postmenopausal women progressing under previous endocrine treatments. Because of its peculiar mechanisms of action, there are indeed high
chances that tumors developing resistance to other hormone ...
Machine learning Modeling of Time-dependent Patient Trajectories KU Leuven
The increasing availability of large-scale medical datasets has fueled the hope of an acceleration toward precision medicine, driven by data. Indeed, the systematic collection of Electronic Health Records (EHR) across several healthcare institutions has resulted in large numbers of patient records even for low-prevalence diseases and allowed uncovering more specific patterns in the evolution of the disease of individual patients. Ultimately, ...
Mapping the winds of evolved stars KU Leuven
The red giant and supergiant stages are late evolutionary phases of stars. Such (super-) giant stars undergo rapid mass loss, ejecting dust and gas in a stellar wind that accelerates away from the star. The wind injects chemically enriched matter into the interstellar medium, including elements primarily created inside these stars. A significant proportion of the dust and molecules found in the interstellar medium come from these stars and ...
Design and optimisation of synthetic DNAzymes: development of an integrated structure analysis approach Ghent University
Catalysis plays an essential role in modern chemical research and in the chemistry of life. It allows creating complex molecular structures and enables and accelerates transformations. A billion years of evolution has allowed the development of protein based enzymes as natural catalysts with high efficiency and selectivity. The creation of artificial catalytic systems inspired by nature has now become a timely human endeavor. DNA represents a ...