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University

Annick Sartenaer, Full Professor - Alexandre Mauroy, Professor - Nicolas Franco, Ph. D. - Sébastien Clesse, Ph. D.- Morgane Dumont, Ph.D. Student

UNamur - FNRS
" Professors and researches from the Department of Mathematics and the naXys research institute of complex systems at UNamur gathered their skills and expertise in mathematical modeling, dynamic systems, statistics, control theory and numerical optimization to develop prediction and unlockdown monitoring models of the Covid-19 epidemic. They set up a consortium in mathematical modeling of the Covid-19 epidemic bringing together all the universities of the Wallonia Brussels Federation, in synergy with its equivalent in Flanders. "
Contact: Annick Sartenaer (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) Alexandre Mauroy (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) Nicolas Franco (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) Sébastien Clesse (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) Morgane Dumont (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Antoine FROIDURE, Professor - Jean-Philippe DEFOUR, Professor - Anabelle DECOTTIGNIES, FNRS Senior Research Associate

UCLouvain, Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc - FNRS
" "Telomeres are non-coding DNA sequences located at the end of chromosomes. In highly dividing cells, like embryonic stem cells and germ cells, telomeres are maintained by the telomerase complex. In the absence of telomerase activity in normal somatic cells, telomeres shorten after each cell division, ultimately leading to cell senescence or apoptosis. Telomeres are thus considered as ""molecular biological clocks"", closely related to ageing. Short telomeres syndromes (STS) have been identified, that are linked to genetic mutations affecting compounds of the telomerase complex, or proteins with crucial roles in telomere protection, and resulting in various conditions including lung fibrosis and aplastic anaemia (1). Bone marrow failure in STS results from the premature exhaustion of hematopoietic stem cells and, overall, tissues from STS patients suffer from premature senescence that likely drives the organ failures...

Benoît Herman

UCLouvain
" Breath4Life is a voluntary, non-profit, and open source effort by a distributed team of engineers, doctors, industry players, to design, test and spread medical ventilators - low cost but as close as possible to existing medical devices. Starting from international standards and guidances, we designed and tested successfully functional prototypes with Volume Controlled Ventilation for intubated patients. We now focus on more advanced modes (including respiratory assistance for patients breathing spontaneously), on intensive testing, and on writing the documentation required for supporting partners around the world to adapt, build and validate their replica. "
Contact: http://breath4life.org/ 

Benoit Kohl, Full Professor

ULiège
" Study of the legal consequences of Covid 19 on the execution of construction contracts in Belgium "
Publication References: B. KOHL, "L'épidémie de Covid-19 et l'exécution des marchés de construction", Journal des Tribunaux, Brussels, Larcier, 2020, pp. 361-371
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Benoît Muylkens, Professor - Nicolas Gillet, Professor

UNamur - Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium - Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium
" UNamur researchers have developed a procedure for the detection of SARS-CoV-2. The protocol has been approved by the Federal Agency for Medicines and Health Products (FAMHP). As successfully realized within UNamur, the method can be implemented in a molecular biology research lab to be used for diagnostic purposes on clinical samples. It requires little technological development and allows to overcome reagents shortage or availability of automated systems. To support the implementation of the diagnostic procedure, the required equipment and logistical means have been described in a "starting pack" document accompanying the protocol. "
Publication References: The protocol and starting pack can be downloaded here: https://www.narilis.be/news/sana-sars-cov-2-namur
Contact: Virginie Bourguignon This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Bernard Fortz, Professor - Martine Labbé, Retired full professor

ULB 
" Within the INOCS team (ULB and INRIA Lille), we currently build expertise on methods to develop optimal design of group testing experiments. "
Contact: Bernard Fortz This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Bernard Pirotte, Professor - Marianne Fillet, Professor - Philippe Hubert, Professor - Pierre Francotte, Assistant Professor

ULiège, CIRM - Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium
" The pandemic has highlighted a critical need of local production of essential drugs used in first-line emergency care of COVID-19 patients. The present consortium has developed a dedicated unit to address this need (both organic synthesis and quality control) following strict quality assurance rules observed by the pharmaceutical industry. The pandemic has highlighted a critical need of local production of essential drugs used in first-line emergency care of COVID-19 patients. The present consortium has developed a dedicated unit to address this need (both organic synthesis and quality control) following strict quality assurance rules observed by the pharmaceutical industry. "
Contact: Prof. Marianne FILLET, CIRM Director, University of Liège https://www.cirm.uliege.be This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Bernard Rimé

UCLouvain
" The Covid-19 outbreak has exposed the world's population to challenging and long-lasting emotional conditions. While investigations of responses to tragic one-off events exist, studies on the evolution of collective emotions during a pandemic are missing. Collecting the time-sensitive data about the population's collective emotional state could improve the planning of mental health interventions and risk-communication. In a first phase, we analyzed the digital traces of emotional expressions on Twitter in the five weeks after the outbreak in 8.3 billion tweets in six different languages from 18 countries. Next, we keep monitoring the evolution of emotional responses with particular attention to lexical indicators of solidarity according to the different phases of the pandemic's evolution, the resumption of activities, and economic and social difficulties in these 18 countries. "
Funding: This is a collaboration with the Complexity Science Hub Vienna (Austria). (These...

Bernardo Innocenti, Professor

ULB
" The aim is to develop and validate a numerical model of a human lung to predict its degeneration over time, in order to provide better knowledge and further info for decision-making to the clinician, addressing both the treatment and the follow-up of the patients after the pathology. "
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Bruno Dumas, Professor

UNamur
" Expertise in information visualisation, i.e. the human side of the data science chain: how to explore data visually, how to create meaningful and efficient interactive visual data exploration tools, how to communicate data visually. "
Publication References: 3 most recent ones: -Duhoux, B., Mens, K. and Dumas, B., 2019, July. Implementation of a Feature-Based Context-Oriented Programming Language. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Context-oriented Programming (pp. 9-16). - Bibal, A., Dumas, B. and Frénay, B., 2019, January. User-Based Experiment Guidelines for Measuring Interpretability in Machine Learning. In EGC Workshop on Advances in Interpretable Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. - Clarinval, A., Linden, I., Wallemacq, A. and Dumas, B., 2018, August. Evoq: a Visualization Tool to Support Structural Analysis of Text Documents. In Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Document Engineering 2018 (pp. 1-10).
Contact: Bruno Dumas Namur Digital Institute -...

Carine Truyens, Professor - Sarra Ait Dejbbara, Assistant PhD student - Pascale Deblandre, Technician - Alain Wathelet-Depauw, Technician

ULB
" Contribution to the realization of Covid-19 diagnosis by PCR We are involved in the diagnosis of Covid-19 at ULB (Erasmus Campus) by coordinating and contributing to two steps of the flow required to detect SARS-CoV-2 RNA in swaps. "
Publication References: /
Contact: Carine Truyens Lab of Parasitology - Faculty of Medicine - ULB Erasmus Campus ctruyens#ulb.ac.be

Carine Truyens, Professor - Sarra Ait Djebbara, Assistant PhD student - Pascale Deblandre, Technician

ULB
" Developing a platform for systems serology analysis of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Sarra Ait Djebbara and Pascale Deblandre are contributing to this project developped by Prof. Arnaud Marchant (IMI - ULB) "
Funding: FNRS
Contact: Lab of Parasitology - Faculty of Medicine - ULB Erasmus Campus

Caroline Daelemans, Professor

ULB
"Our objectives are: • To study maternal and neonate COVID-19 information in the Belgian-Obstetric Surveillance System database: clinical presentation and natural history of disease, pregnancy-related basic information, pregnancy outcomes, birth characteristics, infant morbidity and mortality. • To study the core socio-demographic information to potentially identify groups at higher risk of complications • Build a more informative dataset thanks to data mining of public databases This study will enable us to understand the impact of COVID-19 on pregnant women and their offspring in Belgium, and in the world via the contribution to the INOSS multicenter study. It might allow us to define an at-risk population among pregnant women and their offspring, and tailor epidemiologic and clinical interventions for these more vulnerable individuals."
Funding: Pending (FNRS)
Publication References: "1. The International Network of Obstetric Survey Systems study of uterine rupture: a...

Caroline Daelemans, Professor

ULB
" COVerT Our aim is to delineate more accurately the prevalence of the infection in the pregnant population and study vertical transmission in the cord blood of babies born to mothers with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. Determination of prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in mothers by combined universal screening: presence of antibodies (IgG and IgM or IgA) in their blood and/or a positive RT-PCR in the nasopharyngeal swab. We intend to detect evidence of vertical transmission by the identification of SARS-CoV-2 specific IgM or IgA in cord blood samples. If there is evidence of vertical transmission, the analysis of the consequences depending on infection timing during pregnancy will enable us to guide management more precisely. "
Funding: pending FNRS
Publication References: "1. Delforge ML, Costa E, Brancart F, Goldman D, Montesinos I, Zaytouni S, Marchant A, Donner C Presence of cytomegalovirus in urine and blood of pregnant women with primary infection might be associated...

Contact us

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Rue d’Egmont 5

B - 1000 Bruxelles

Tél : +32 2 504 92 11

info@COVID19-WB.be

Brussels & Wallonia against COVID19