Welcome to the 65th ITM Colloquium!

Leen Rigouts, PhD in Biomedical Sciences, joined the Mycobacteriology Unit of the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) in 1989, where she currently acts as Senior Scientific Expert, technical advisor of the Supranational Reference Laboratory Antwerp, Coordinator of the World Health Organization’s ISO17043-accredited External Quality Assurance program for Tuberculosis drug-susceptibility testing proficiency, and Manager of the BCCM/ITM public collection of mycobacterial strains.

Under her leadership, the Mycobacteriology Unit acquainted the ISO15189 accreditation for clinical laboratories in 2004 and successfully maintained it thereafter. She was actively involved in designing the L2/L3 facilities for TB, and writing the respective biosafety guidelines. This expertise is now frequently consulted by international collaborating centers.

Since 2008, she is professor in Tropical Infectious Diseases at the University of Antwerp (UA).

She is member of the Core Group of the Global Laboratory Initiative (GLI), vice-president of the European Society of Mycobacteriology (ESM), and member of various scientific expert committees like BELTA-TBnet and the Technical Advisory Group for WHO-EUR.

Leen's research efforts focus on phenotypic and genotypic drug-susceptibility testing, TB diagnostics, Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex phylogeny and mycobacterial taxonomy.

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Tom Decroo graduated as a medical doctor at the University of Ghent (2000), holds a MSc in Public Health from the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp (2013) and obtained a PhD in Medical Sciences from the University of Antwerp (2017). His doctoral research was titled “Community-based ART in sub-Saharan Africa: lessons learnt from Community ART Groups in Tete province, Mozambique”.

Between 2003 and 2012, he was based as a clinician, researcher and coordinator for MSF-OCB in Africa (Mozambique, Burkina Faso). From 2014 to 2016, he worked as Operational Research Programme Officer for MSF-OCB. In 2016, he joined ITM’s Unit of HIV and Tuberculosis in the Department of Clinical Sciences. He obtained an FWO post-doctoral mandate for the period 2018-2021. He now works as senior researcher. His main research interests include HIV community participation and the diagnosis and treatment of drug-resistant TB. He is passionate about supporting research projects led by Master's and PhD students.

He has over 120 Pubmed-cited publications.

Dionicia Gamboa is a biologist with a Master's in Biochemistry, both degrees from Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (UPCH). She obtained her PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Maastricht, The Netherlands, within a programme supported by the Belgian cooperation from the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp. Currently, she is Full Professor at the Department of Cellular and Molecular Sciences, Faculty of Science and Engineering (FACI) at UPCH. She is also member of the Institute of Tropical Medicine “Alexander Von Humboldt” (IMTAvH) – UPCH. She is Director of the Malaria: Parasites and Vectors Laboratory that belongs to the Laboratorios de Investigación y Desarrollo (LID – FACI – UPCH).

She carries out research projects in the area of health and tropical infectious diseases, specifically malaria in the Peruvian Amazon region. Her projects include the development and use of specialised molecular tools for diagnosis, genetic charactersation, and surveillance of the parasites and vectors. She has more than 100 publications and more than 45 students (under- and postgraduate) from Peru (UPCH and other universities) and other countries.

Since 2008, she is member of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH), she is also member of the Peruvian National Academy of Science (ANC). Currently she is part of the ANC board directory.

Liselotte Hardy is Professor and Head of the Tropical Bacteriology Unit at the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp. She is a biomedical scientist specialised in bacterial diagnostics. After a few years working in clinical studies for the pharmaceutical industry, she moved to ITM’s department of public health coordinating projects on vaginal health in sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. Inspired by this, she did her PhD research at ITM’s Reference Laboratory for Sexually Transmitted Infections led by Tania Crucitti, on characterising the bacterial biofilm in bacterial vaginosis.

After her PhD, Liselotte worked at the Photonics Research Group of Ghent University for a few years. Here she co-developed a lab-on-chip platform to diagnose infectious diseases, leading to the spin-off company Antelope Dx. Just before Antelope Dx’s incorporation, Liselotte moved back to ITM to the Unit of Tropical Bacteriology of Jan Jacobs. In the past decade, she has set up its research line on the development and implementation of adapted diagnostics for low-resource settings. In September 2024, she succeeded Jan as head of unit and professor Tropical Bacteriology.

Her research focus is on field-approriate bacterial diagnostics and local production of culture media building on the unit’s longstanding work on AMR surveillance.

Joachim Mariën is a disease ecologist with expertise in rodent- and vector-borne zoonoses. He currently leads the Unit of Virus Ecology at ITM, where he focuses on the ecological and evolutionary drivers of pathogen transmission. He holds a PhD from the University of Antwerp, where he studied the ecology of arenaviruses in Tanzania and Guinea. After his PhD, he joined the ITM Outbreak Research Team, contributing to outbreak investigations and serosurveys for Chikungunya and SARS-CoV-2 in Africa and Belgium. He later held an FWO postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Antwerp and a FED-tWIN fellowship jointly at the Royal Museum for Central Africa and the University of Antwerp.

His research integrates field studies, serology, and mathematical modeling to inform zoonotic disease control strategies. He has coordinated several international One Health projects in Central and West Africa and teaches on infectious disease ecology at the University of Antwerp.

Faridath Massou is a pharmacist and clinical biologist specialising in bacteriology and molecular biology. She is currently a PhD candidate in bioinformatics and molecular biology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, under joint supervision by the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp and the Mycobacteria Reference Laboratory in Cotonou, Benin.

Her research focuses on the evaluation and implementation of innovative molecular diagnostic tools for tuberculosis, with a strong emphasis on making these technologies more accessible to those who need them most. She is also actively involved in strengthening diagnostic networks to improve equity in access to care across resource-limited settings.

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Dr Antoine Nkuba is a senior researcher at the Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale and an Associate Professor at the University of Kinshasa. He completed a PhD in Health Science at Montpellier University, France, an MPH at Yonsei University, South Korea, and an MD at the University of Kinshasa, DRC. With a background in clinical practice, medical biology, public health and emerging infectious diseases, he contributed to outbreak responses for Yellow Fever, Chikungunya, Ebola, and COVID-19. He also trained at Harvard and is currently a researcher at the University of Montpellier.

He has authored and co-authored more than 20 scientific publications.

Thijs Reyniers obtained his Master's degree in Sociology (Major: Sociology of Health) from Ghent University (2009) and, one year after, finished the Teacher Program there. After that, Thijs quickly found his way back to science and started conducting research concerning the appropriateness and avoidability of end-of-life hospital admissions within the End-of-Life Care Research Group at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and Ghent University. Four years later (2015), he obtained his PhD in Social Health Sciences from VUB and his PhD in Health Sciences from Ghent University.

Thijs is currently a senior researcher in the Unit of Sexual Health including HIV at the Department of Public Health of ITM, with a particular interest in health sciences and social sciences. Thijs’ research focuses on HIV prevention and sexual health, more particularly PrEP implementation among populations such as men who have sex with men and female sex workers, primarily in Belgium (and EU as a whole) and West-Africa.

Dr Özge Tunçalp is a distinguished physician and epidemiologist and currently serving as the Executive Director of ITM since 1 January 2025. Prior to her role at ITM, she was a medical officer in the Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research, including the research programme of the UN agencies and the World Bank (HRP), at the World Health Organization (WHO). She spearheaded large-scale implementation and innovation research, and developed evidence-based guidelines and knowledge translation tools for country impact, focusing on antenatal care and quality of care. In collaboration with country, regional, and global partners, she employed quantitative and qualitative methodologies, along with innovative approaches, to improve the quality of maternal and perinatal healthcare, including safe abortion services in low- and middle-income countries.

She is a recipient of the Maternal Health Visionary Award from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, recognising her leadership in advancing maternal health globally. She holds an MD from the Istanbul School of Medicine, an MPH and PhD from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale School of Medicine. Additionally, she is an honorary professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and has co-authored over 200 publications.

Anna Rosanas-Urgell is a Professor and Head of the Malariology Unit at the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp. She is a molecular epidemiologist and geneticist with over 19 years of experience in researching Plasmodium parasites. She completed a MSc in Experimental research at the University of Barcelona and a MSc in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, followed by a PhD in Genetics (University of Barcelona). Her postdoctoral work at the University of São Paulo and the Hospital of Tropical Medicine in Manaus focused on investigating P. vivax spleen evasion mechanisms and monitoring the malaria surveillance system in the region.

In 2007, Prof Rosanas-Urgell joined ISGlobal in Barcelona and the Institute of Medical Research (IMR) in Papua New Guinea, where she supervised field and the molecular work for a longitudinal cohort study to investigate the burden of infection and disease caused by P. vivax. In 2009, she became Head of the Molecular and Epidemiology Unit at IMR, where she developed and led the malaria molecular epidemiology program, focusing on the association of red blood cells polymorphisms with malaria susceptibility and the epidemiology of P. falciparum and P. vivax. In 2012, Prof Rosanas-Urgell was appointed Head of the Malariology Unit at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp.

Fundamental research questions at the core of Prof Rosanas-Urgell’s unit continue to be solidly grounded in field-research providing a rare bridge between in vivo and in vitro studies. Current activities span Plasmodium research in Africa, South America, South-East Asia and Oceania. By using state-of-the-art molecular and cell biology technologies, Prof Rosanas-Urgell’s unit aims to gain understanding on how malaria parasites (P. falciparum and P. vivax) adapt to the environment for parasite evasion and survival. The unit focus on how host factors such as genetics, exposure to drugs and immunity can modify individual risk and modulate parasite decision to replicate or reproduce. The unit uses genomic epidemiology studies to investigate how parasite adaptation (through selection pressure on parasite phenotypes) is moderated at the genomic and transcriptomic level. In complementarity with this and closely connected to the ongoing disease-elimination efforts, the unit aims to contribute to the development of innovative surveillance tools and improved strategies.