Anne-Mieke Vandamme

Prof Dr Anne-Mieke Vandamme was trained as biochemist, and holds a PhD in sciences since 1986. She joined the Rega Institute at the University of Leuven in 1990, where she started a unit on virus genetic testing for clinical and epidemiological purposes (http://rega.kuleuven.be/cev/avd/). She co-founded a new division, Clinical and Epidemiological Virology; and co-started the “Institute of the future”(www.institute-for-the-future.be), a transdisciplinary research incubator. She is member of the Superior Health Council of the Belgian government and of the WHO ad-hoc advisory group on COVID-19. Anne-Mieke Vandamme and her team perform research on the molecular epidemiology of viruses, on virus drug resistance testing in clinical context, and on bioinformatics (data mining, phylogenetic analysis) tools. She has been participating in, or coordinating, many European projects (currently ZIKAlliance and STEAM+). She supported the development of a few widely used (bioinformatics) tools: the Rega HIV Drug Resistance algorithm; the Rega HIV typing and subtyping tool; and RegaDB, a free and open source software for collecting and sharing HIV epidemiological, clinical and virological data; Genome Detective, an automated system for virus identification from high-throughput sequencing. At the Institute for the Future, she coaches teams that incubate transdisciplinary research projects geared towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (https://rega.kuleuven.be/if/challenges). She is currently coaching a Coronavirus Pandemic Preparedness challenge (https://rega.kuleuven.be/if/coronavirus_challenge) and is coordinating a project on Futures for Food. She authored more than 400 scientific publications in international journals and more than 800 presentations for International Meetings. In addition to her research activities, Anne-Mieke Vandamme is founder and organizer of the yearly International Bioinformatics Workshop on Virus Evolution and Molecular Epidemiology (VEME, 25th in 2020), is co-initiator and co-organizer of the European HIV Drug Resistance Workshop (18th in 2020), is invited professor at the ‘Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical’ (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal) and visiting professor at the Medical School, University of Belgrade, Serbia. She teaches Evolutionary Genetics and Bioinformatics at the University of Leuven, and co-started an Honours Programme on Transdisciplinary Insights. She also launched a new eJournal for the Institute for the Future: Transdisciplinary Insights, and co-founded two start-up companies (IBEICO and MYBIODATA).