With my personal funding secured until 2020 my primary goal is to bring the new therapeutic modalities we have been working on in the Speleman and Vandesompele labs to the clinic. Detailed genomic profiling of primary and relapse paediatric tumors should enable us to direct patients towards their optimal phase I or II clinical trials over the following years. In close collaboration with the Innovative therapies for children with cancer consortium (ITCC) our aim is to start early phase clinical trials targeting the oncogenic pathways we have helped unravel over the past decade.

Working as a specialty registrar in paediatric haematology and oncology at the department of paediatric hematology, oncology and bone marrow transplantation of Ghent University Hospital I took care for patients hospitalised at our ward and in the outpatient clinic. I was heavily involved in the care for our patents enrolled in the ITCC phase I and II clinical trials.

As of 2012 I was a laureate of the Emmanuel van der Scheuren scholarship, finishing up my Phd at the Center for Medical Genetics at Ghent University in the Vandesompele and Speleman labs

Funded by the FWO Flanders I performed fundamental onco-genetic research at the vandesompele and Speleman labs at Ghent University.My main research topics are bioinformatics, next generation sequencing and paediatric cancer genomics with a focus on neuroblastoma.

I was selected by the national board of pediatrics to be trained as a pediatrician in 2005. I performed my rotations in the departments of general paediatrics, paediatric intensive care and neonatal intensive care of Ghent University Hospital over a 3 year period.

As part of my internship in pediatrics I worked at the st. Jan Academic hospital in Bruges, Belgium for a total period of 9 months. Rotations primarily consisted of neonatal intensive care (2/3 of time) and general pediatrics (1/3 of time)