TEAM MEMBERS

Prof. Liesbet M. Peeters is an Assistant Professor at Data Science Institute and Biomedical Research Institute of Hasselt University (Belgium).

In 2013, she finished her PhD in Bio-Engineering Sciences at the KULeuven in Belgium. Prof. Peeters firmly believes that data saves lives, and she envisions a world where every person receives timely and appropriate medical treatment. Her current research focuses on the use of Big Data in Health and Care with a specific focus and expertise in multiple sclerosis (MS). She investigates and implements new methodologies to overcome the technical and sociological challenges that arise with scaling-up real-world data.

Lotte Geys has a background in biomedical sciences. She defended her PhD in 2017 at the University of Leuven and started working as clinical data manager afterwards. Since December 2019, she is working for the research group of Biomedical Data Sciences under supervision of Prof. Liesbet Peeters where she is currently employed as postdoctoral researcher.

Lotte has a bridgebuilding role between the worlds of biomedical sciences and data sciences and has expertise in governance and contract management when it comes to reuse of real-world health data for research.

Ashkan got his master degree  in industrial engineering in 2018 and after that did another master's in MBA. He has started his adventure as a joint Ph.D. student in mid-2019 with the close collaboration of STADIUS/ESAT lab of KU Leuven.

He is currently working on a federated learning framework to apply this framework in multiple sclerosis using real-world data. He believes in FAIR data. As "Accessibility" is one of these FAIR data principles, He aims to launch infrastructure and framework that learns from other data sources without sacrificing privacy in real-world data. He believes we already pass the centralized data silos era for big data research, and we have to come up with ideas to know how to share data, of course, by taking into account all the ethical and legal challenges.

His other research interest is machine learning, specifically artificial neural networks, BlockChain, and DevOps, with a keen interest in containerization.

Tina Parciak has a background in Medical Informatics and has been part of the MS Data Alliance since its very beginning, bringing the topic of harmonisation of real-world data in MS forward.

Within her current PhD studies within the research group of biomedical data sciences at the Biomedical Research Institute and Data Science Institute at UHasselt, she is developing and orchestrating new technologies and strategies for harmonisation for real-world MS data sources. One of her research interests lies in the adaptability of the OMOP common data model (OHDSI) for real-world data coming from registries. She is the lead of the OHDSI Registry workgroup.

Hamza Khan completed his Bachelor's in Dental Surgery before pursuing a Master's degree in Public Health (MPH) in 2019. During his internship at the International Organization for Migration (IOM - Regional Office for EU/EEA and NATO, Brussels), he gained insight into the importance of data and robust statistical methods/machine learning in healthcare research.

Marcel finished his applied computer science studies in 2017, earning a master's degree. Afterwards, he worked as a research associate at the medical data integration center of the university medical center Göttingen. During this time, he developed IT-infrastructures and worked as a health data engineer.

Sofie is a Master's graduate in Clinical Biomedical Sciences from Hasselt University. During her Master's education, she gained experience managing real-world data (RWD) at the University MS Centre Hasselt-Pelt and acquired insights into the current challenges related to it.

Dr. ir. Ilse Vermeulen is a Bio-engineer in Cell and Gene Biotechnology with a PhD in Medical Sciences from the Free University of Brussels (VUB), which she obtained in 2012. During her doctoral studies, Ilse focused on prediction models and epidemiological studies in the clinical biology of type I diabetes, which provided her with extensive experience in data processing and writing research articles for peer-reviewed journals.

For the past few years, Ilse has been working as a project manager at the University of Applied Sciences Leuven-Limburg (UCLL), where she was responsible for the respective focus lines "Environment & Health" and "Technology Enhanced Care".

In April 2022, Ilse joined the Research Group of Biomedical Data Sciences of Liesbet Peeters as a Staff Member and Project Manager to support the MS Data Alliance. Additionally, she leads the follow-up of other projects within the group, e.g. EBRAINS. Ilse is a vigorous creator, project enabler, and adept at transforming real-world data into real-world evidence.

Noëlla Pierlet is the Head of the Data Science team at ‘Ziekenhuis Oost-Limburg’ in Genk. She has over 25 years of experience in medical IT: she started as a system administrator, changed to software developer, project lead, and finally a data scientist. One of her specialties is bridging the gap between physicians and engineers. She is a pro at translating complex medical jargon into language that technical people can understand and vice versa.

Noëlla firmly believes that qualitative, structured data is the foundation for improving patient care. Her passion for using data to drive change and enhance healthcare has led her to pursue a PhD within the biomedical data sciences research group where she researches how to improve data quality in real world data.

Anouk, a dedicated general practitioner in the Maastricht region, recently completed her Master in Management and Policy in Healthcare in September 2023. She began her PhD in early 2024, focusing on "Population Health Management in First Line Care in the Limburg Region." This research is particularly critical as healthcare faces significant challenges such as the rise in non-communicable diseases, growing health inequalities, changing patient expectations, increasing healthcare costs, and a shortage of healthcare providers, exacerbated by a wave of retirements among general practitioners. Anouk’s work aims to address these urgent needs and contribute to the reorganization of healthcare in our region.

Axel Faes received the M.Sc. degree in Computer Science Engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), Leuven, Belgium. He also received the M.SC. degree in Artificial Intelligence from the same university. In 2023, he obtained his PhD, titled "Finger Movement Decoding: From Source-Localisation to Tensor Regression Modelling",in Biomedical Sciences with the Computational Neuroscience Group of the Laboratory for Neuro- and Psychophysiology at KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. Since 2024, he is working for the research group of Biomedical Data Sciences under supervision of Prof. Liesbet Peeters where he is currently employed as postdoctoral researcher.