Veerle BaekelandtDr. Veerle Baekelandt obtained a Master of Romance Languages, Master of Biology, and a PhD in Biology at the Katholieke Universiteit (KU) Leuven. She received a Frank Boas Fulbright scholarship for graduate study at Harvard University and became a reearch fellow in the Laboratory for Neuroscience Research headed by Dr. Larry Benowitz, Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston (1992-1993). Her post-doctoral fellowship looked at gene therapy for neurodegenerative diseases, which became the cornerstone of her own research group.

She was appointed Assistant Professor at the KU Leuven in 2003 and in 2007, as full-time Research Professor (BOF-ZAP). She is now Head of the Laboratory for Neurobiology and Gene Therapy. Her research focuses on disease modeling and therapy for Parkinson's disease using viral vectors in cell culture and in vivo. The underlying rationale is that the generation of more relevant models in cells and in pre-clinical model brain will lead to a better insight into the molecular pathogenesis of PD and to the development of new therapeutic strategies and drugs. Read More Read Less