Projects

Organs and biological tissues have a spatial heterogeneity. Thus, 2D measurements like histomorphometry only partially reveal the degree of change during tissue formation and integration. As a solution, the applicant proposes the use of nanofocus X-ray computed tomography (nanoCT). It allows 3D visualization at high spatial resolution. However, soft tissue contrast is inherently poor. Therefore, within this project it is the aim to synthesize ...

The IOF program CADcracker aims to facilitate the interaction and collaboration between researchers and stakeholders in the agrofood chain on innovative computational solutions to understand, design, optimize and control processes and products in the agrofood chain. Computer aided design and engineering (CADE) tools, from numerical simulation to artificial intelligence, are developed and applied for optimizing existing and novel agrofood ...

The confocal fluorescence microscope Leica TCS SP2 Laser Scanning Spectral Confocal System, localized in the Laboratory of Virology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine is a device that is daily used by different users of the Faculties of Veterinary Medicine and Medicine and Health Sciences for the research on different biological processes (pathogenesis, immunopathology, embryology, …). It is ...

Membrane molecules assemble in a liquid disordered phase, playing an essential role in compartmentalization and signaling of the cell. Predicting the timescale of membrane processes, such as permeation and rupture, is crucial for determining their biological functioning, but, unfortunately, most methods at the molecular scale are limited to thermodynamical free energy calculations where the kinetical information is simply absent. The central ...

Increasing computational power allows for the description and prediction of natural processes by modelling its smallest-scale interactions, recreating natural phenomena in a bottom-up fashion. Two classes of such approaches, which are especially pertinent for modelling spatio-temporal processes, are cellular automata (CAs) and their topological extension, network automata (NAs). The simplest types of CAs and NAs are well studied, but for ...

In this project we want to explore how automated data mining and text mining techniques can be developed to provide researchers with automatically generated summaries to enable them to gather as much information as possible about a specific biological process or a group of genes. This project aims to use the richness of current data sources more efficiently.

Experiments will elucidate whether thoroughly characterized composts, differentiated based on their nematode communities, have different effects on soil properties and nematode assemblages. An ecometagenetics approach will distinguish between compost- and native assemblages and reveal if the nematodes in compost directly contribute to the nematode community in the soil vs. that observed effects are due to the overall stimulation of the soil ...