During his scientific career, Lieven built a truly multidisciplinary background. He obtained his PhD (2005) in the field of gene therapy which involved the engineering of viral vectors for targeted gene delivery. Since 2005 he has been involved in muscle tissue engineering. He also performed research and published in applied bioinformatics and systems biology. In 2012 he established the Tissue Engineering Lab at the KU Leuven campus Kortrijk, focusing on development of a 3D muscle model. The main focus of his lab is on engineering a blood vessel network in a bio-artificial muscle model consisting of aligned, force-generating myofibers and on development of methods for muscle stimulation. More recently, the expertise of the lab expanded to the field of muscle decellularization research. Lieven is involved in several collaborations both within Belgium as well as international (including several Interreg projects). Furthermore, he is collaborating with industry, offering tools for drug testing and provides consulting services. He is very active in teaching courses including histology, methods in biomedical research, tissue engineering, medical scientific research and is responsible for an annual student trip to China. He is a member of several institutional boards and was program director of the education committee bachelor biomedical sciences at the campus. Lieven has an H-index of 33 and his papers have been cited >4000 times, he is co-author of several books and serves as referee for >10 journals and three national grant agencies.