Severine Vermeire - Biography#

Séverine Vermeire obtained her MD degree at the KU Leuven in 1995 and a PhD at the same University in 2001 on “Genetic Polymorphisms and Serologic Markers in Inflammatory Bowel Disease”. She further trained at the Universidad Nacional de Asuncion, Paraguay (1993), at the Welcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics , University of Oxford (1997-1998) UK and at the Montreal General Hospital (McGill University) in Canada (2000–2001).

Since 2003 she is staff member at the Gastroenterology Department of the University Hospitals Leuven and is appointed Full Professor of Medicine at the KU Leuven. From 2016-2021, she was the Head of the Department of Chronic Diseases & Metabolism (CHROMETA) at the KU Leuven before she became the Research Director of the Group of Biomedical Sciences in August 2021.

Dr Vermeire is actively involved as principle investigator in RCTs with new therapeutic compounds and has been lead investigator on several of these programs. Her scientific work resulted in more than 500 peer-reviewed articles so far and focusses on the role of the microbiome and genetic susceptibility in IBD and on identifying predictive signatures of treatment response. Dr Vermeire participated in the International iCHOM consortium on development of Patient-Centered Outcomes for Inflammatory Bowel Disease.

She was awarded several grants including an Advanced H2020-European Research Council (ERC) Grant (2016 - 2021) and a VIB Grand Challenges project on microbiota modulation strategies in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases together with Jeroen Raes (2018)

Séverine Vermeire was President of the European Crohn’s and Colitis Organisation (ECCO) from 2014 - 2016 and of the Belgian IBD Research & Development (BIRD) Group from 2011 - 2013