Lieven Thorrez

During his scientific career, Lieven built a truly multidisciplinary background. He obtained his PhD (2005) in the field of gene therapy which involved the engineering of viral vectors for targeted gene delivery. Since 2005 he has been involved in muscle tissue engineering. He also performed research and published in applied bioinformatics and systems biology. In 2012 he established the Tissue Engineering Lab at the KU Leuven campus Kortrijk, focusing on development of a 3D muscle model. The main focus of his lab is on engineering a blood vessel network in a bio-artificial muscle model consisting of aligned, force-generating myofibers and on development of methods for muscle stimulation. Over the past years, the expertise of the lab expanded to the field of muscle decellularization research for regenerative medicine. Lieven is involved in several national and international collaborations. Furthermore, he is collaborating with industry, offering tools for drug testing and provides consulting services. He is very active in teaching courses including histology, methods in biomedical research, tissue engineering and medical scientific research. He is co-chair of the group biomedical sciences at the campus and a member of several institutional boards. Lieven has an H-index of 38 and his papers have been cited >6000 times, he is co-author of several books and serves as referee for >10 journals and three national grant agencies.