UNamur
" Mathematical modelling of the covid-19 epidemic in Belgium (SIR-type models, age-structured, care centres consideration,...): monitoring, detection of new peak and scenario-based forecasting "
Publication References: Technical reports can be delivered on demand
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Comment: Collaboration with GEES members on the mathematical modelling of the covid-19 epidemic in Belgium

ULiège
" The group in ULiege is developing models for capturing the growth / dynamics of the covid19 epidemic. The specificity of this work concerns the situations in hospitals. Indeed, the models include data like patients in hospitals, in ICU (Intensive Care Units) or deceased. Forecasting trends or testing strategies is possible with this kind of models. Every day, analysis and plots are published on the Twitter account of Prof. Vandewalle @vdwnico "
Contact: Nicolas Vandewalle - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Twitter : @vdwnico

LHUB-ULB - Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium
" "The purpose of this study is to map the healthcare workers exposure risk in Saint-Pierre University Hospital by combining molecular methods with serological assays. In summary, the short-term objective is threefold: (1) Provide an estimate of the sero-prevalence at baseline among high-risk health care workers (2) Determine prospectively the incidence of new SARS-CoV-2 infections among high-risk health care workers (3) Estimate the healthcare worker exposure to the virus by serological data to help our five partner hospitals in their day-to-day management of the ongoing pandemic The mid-term objectives are: (1) Establish an accurate mapping of the spread of the virus among our population allowing to identify the chain of transmission, (2) Identify predictive immunological markers of susceptibility to infection and disease severity to inform vaccine strategies and, (3) Establish solid diagnosis algorithm that will help adequate lockdown...

Read more: O. Vandenberg, Pr. - N. Clumeck, Pr. - C. Montesinos, Pr. - N. Dauby, MD, PhD - C. Gilles, MD - C....

UMONS 
" On the basis of the official figures published by the national crisis committee, Olivier Debauche ("Computing, Software and Artificial Intelligence" department, Faculty Poytechnique, UMONS) has published a graph every day (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) which shows the evolution of the pandemic situation in Belgium by means of GeoAI. The goal is to show graphs and especially to explain why and how the curves evolve. "
Publication References: https://covid.engineering
Contact: Olivier DEBAUCHE UMons / Faculty of Engineering Infortech / ILIA Unit rue de Houdain 9 B-7000 Mons Belgium Phone: +32 65 37 40 59
Comment: Member of the consortium "covid-19 Mathematical Modelisation"

Erasme Hospital
" Precise the frequency of thrombosis events in COVID19 patients "
Funding: No need
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

ULB
" We are developing a prototype, upon the request of Médecins Sans Frontières | MSF Belgique, with aim to monitor key parameters of a patient's health - levels of oxygen saturation in the blood, heart rate and temperature - in order to detect a potential covid19 infection, and to adapt the patient care accordingly. The prototype is wearable, battery powered, and send its data wirelessly. In this regard, the patient can be remotely monitored. "
Funding: Own funds
Publication References: None.
Contact: Primary contact: Antoine Nonclercq - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ULB BEAMS (Oriane Bastin - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. & Ken Hasselmann - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. & Antoine Nonclercq - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. & Michel Osée - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. & François Quitin - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) ULB LISA (Olivier Debeir - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. & Rudy Ercek - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) ULB Smart Campus (Jean Landercy - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

ULiège, CHU - Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium
" Nous faisons face à une pandémie d'infection COVID-19. Ce virus pathogène est source de complications pulmonaires aggravant fortement le pronostic de nos patients. De nos jours, tant les mécanismes physiopathologiques en cause que les marqueurs de sévérité de l'atteinte restent indéterminés. Il apparaît donc comme urgent de pouvoir identifier des marqueurs diagnostiques, pronostiques et prédictifs pour nos patients. Dans ce contexte, plusieurs voies rapidement explorables nous apparaissent comme critiques. Le but final de cette étude est de contribuer à une prise en charge plus ciblée des patients porteurs d'une infection au SRAS-Cov-2. "
Funding: Fonds Léon Frederic
Publication References: Dix publications représentatives : 1) Prevention of murine radiogenic thymic lymphomas by tumor necrosis factor or by marrow grafting. HUMBLET C, GREIMERS R, DELVENNE P, DEMAN J, BONIVER J, DEFRESNE MP. J Natl Cancer Inst 88 (1996), 824-831. IF...

Read more: Ph. DELVENNE, FNRS Research Director / Chef de service Anatomie pathologique - J. GUIOT, Chef de...

ULB
" We developed a sensor network system that estimates and forecasts crowd counts in outdoor and indoor areas. The counts and forecasts are available in real-time through a web service. The system allows authorities and owners to manage and control social distancing measures. The system is ready for installation and use. "
Publication References: J-F Determe, U. Singh, F.Horlin, Ph De Doncker, « Forecasting Crowd Counts With Wi-Fi Systems: Univariate, Non-Seasonal Models », IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2020
Contact: Prof. François Horlin (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) Prof. Philippe De Doncker (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

GSK - Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium
" Support covid international: https://www.gsk.com/en-gb/media/resource-centre/our-contribution-to-the-fight-against-2019-ncov/ Support covid en Belgique: https://be.gsk.com/media/915368/cp-gsk-contributions-majeures-de-gsk-a-la-lutte-contre-le-covid-19.pdf NA NA "
Funding: NA
Contact: Philippe Denoel - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

UCLouvain
" www.covidata.be We gather data about the Coronavirus in Belgium, and attempt to extract meaningful information from it. We use open and/or public data to enable these analyses. "
Funding: No funding
Publication References: Work in progress
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

ULiège 
" My main research interest is the development of complete analytical solutions for biomedical applications. I mostly focus on breath and other volatile matrices characterization. "
Publication References: Zanella, D., HENKET, M., SCHLEICH, F., Louis, R., Focant, J.-F., & Stefanuto, P.-H. (2019). Multi-matrices screening for untargeted volatilomics by GC×GC-TOFMS. European Respiratory Journal. Supplement, 54, 4272. Purcaro, G.* , Stefanuto, P.-H.* , Flavio, F., Marco, B., Wieland-Alter, W., Wright, P., & Hill, J. (2018, March). SPME-GC×GC-TOF MS fingerprint of virally-infected cell culture: Sample preparation optimization and data processing evaluation. Analytica Chimica Acta. SCHLEICH, F., Zanella, D., Stefanuto, P.-H., Dallinga, J., HENKET, M., Wouters, E. F. M., Van Steen, K., Van Schooten, F., Focant, J.-F., & Louis, R. (2019). Exhaled Volatile Organic Compounds Are Able to Discriminate Between Neutrophilic and Eosinophilic Asthma. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF...

Read more: Pierre-Hugues Stefanuto, PhD

UMONS 
" The high-performance computing facility of UMONS (Dragon 2, which is part of the Consortium des Equipements de Calcul Intensif), has been adapted and used to run the analysis of the COVID-19 phylogenetic clusters performed by the Spatial Epidemiology Laboratory at ULB (Dr. S. Dellicour and Prof. M. Gilbert). "
Contact: people involved at UMONS: Sébastien Kozlowskyj, system manager This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Prof. Roberto Lazzaroni This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

UMONS - Faculty of Engineering - ILIA and ISIA Departments
" This study allows an early Covid-19 diagnosis by using AI and explainable based classification and detection methods applied to CT and X-ray datasets. Many datasets form several hospitals in Belgium are used. The goal of the project is to use AI based methods to identify Covid-19 patients. Explainable AI methods are used to provide efficient interpretation and visualization tools for the classification and detection results obtained. The second goal of this project is to create a benchmark dataset composed of chest CT and X-ray database related to Covid-19 disease. To this aim, a semi-automatic annotation tool is developed in order to allow fast image annotation by radiologists. - Explainable artificial intelligence applied to Covid-19 detection based on CT and X-ray images. - Annotation tool development to build a benchmark database. "
Funding: University of Mons - Faculty of Engineering
Publication References: ...

Read more: Saïd Mahmoudi, Professor - Thierry Dutoit, Full Professor - Sidi Ahmed Mahmoudi, Professor- Xavier...

ULB - FNRS
" Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, an unprecedented number of genomic sequences of the causative virus (SARS-CoV-2) have been publicly released. The resulting volume of available genetic data presents a unique opportunity to gain real-time insights into the pandemic, but also a daunting computational hurdle if analysed with gold-standard phylogeographic methods. We here describe and apply an analytical pipeline that is a compromise between fast and rigorous analytical steps. As a proof of concept, we focus on Belgium, one of the countries with the highest spatial density of sequenced SARS-CoV-2 genomes. At the global scale, our analyses confirm the importance of external introduction events in establishing transmission chains in the country. At the country scale, our spatially-explicit phylogeographic analyses highlight an impact of the national lockdown of mid-March on both the long-distance dispersal events and the dispersal velocity of viral lineages. Our...

Read more: Simon Dellicour, FNRS Postdoctoral Researcher

UCLouvain, IRSS 
" How the Covid-19 Pandemic changes the dynamics of meetings and organizations in the Health and Education Sectors? The containment measures deployed following the Covid-19 pandemic produced a partial, if not complete, shift to telework. In many sectors, virtual meetings are now at the heart of work organization and coordination. How do people feel about their virtual meetings? And what do virtual meetings say about our organizations ? To find an answer to these questions, we have distributed a survey within six Belgian universities (University Ghent, University Hasselt, VUB, UCLouvain, ULiège and ULB) and health care services and administrations. "
Funding: none
Publication References: https://www.lecho.be/opinions/carte-blanche/que-penser-des-reunions-virtuelles-qui-se-generalisent/10223471 https://uclouvain.be/fr/decouvrir/coronavirus-que-nous-apprend-la-pratique-des-reunions-virtuelles.html
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Comment: "Virtual Meetings in the...

Read more: Sophie Thunus, Professor