Bart Lambrecht - Biography#

Bart studied medicine (MD, 1993), graduated summa cum laude, and obtained a PhD in Immunology (1999) at Ghent University. During his PhD, he obtained a scholarship to study immunology at the University of Sydney, Australia for 8 months. After that PhD, Bart decided he wanted to combine clinical specialist training with an immunology postdoc position, but that was impossible in Belgium. He therefore moved in 1998 to Rotterdam, The Netherlands and specialized in Pulmonary Medicine at ErasmusMC, and set up his own immunology lab simultaneously, which was part of the negotiations. By the end of his specialization, Bart became full professor of Pulmonary Medicine in 2004, and was running a lab of 20 people, all on grants that he acquired during his training. With the Flemish Odysseus I program, a grant of 7.5 million €, and carte blanche to do high risk-high gain research, it was very tempting to return, and in 2007 he became Full Professor of Pulmonary Medicine at Ghent University, with a simultaneous part-time clinical appointment in University Hospital Ghent. In 2011, Bart also started coordinating a University of Gent Spearhead program around inflammatory diseases, and shortly after he obtained his first ERC Consolidator grant.

In 2012, Bart was asked if he would head a VIB department in Gent (formerly headed by Walter Fiers), and he decided to take the position, providing he would be able to reorient the focus to Inflammatory Diseases. Under his impetus, the department was renamed VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research, he recruited 8 new PIs, and the center now employs 450 scientists in 17 units, across three Universities, at the interface of academia and industry. This center is now internationally known for its work on inflammatory diseases, and is performing as one of the best VIB departments.

For his work, Bart and his team and received several awards including being elected to the “Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium (2022)”; and prizes like “Accademia dei Lincei Morelli prize (Rome, 2021)”; “FWO Excellence Prize Fundamental Biomedical Sciences Joseph Maisin (2020);“European Respiratory Society Asthma Gold Medal (Milan, 2016)”, “Franqui Prize (Brussels, 2014)”; “The Inbev Baillet Latour Clinical Prize (Brussels, 2008)”; The ERS “Maurizio Vignola” and the ERS Romain Pauwels awards (2005, 2010); the Pharmacia Allergy Research Foundation Prize (Stockholm, 2004), Schering-Plough Young Investigator Award (New York, 1998), and many others. He has guided and mentored at least 50 excellent MD/PhD students and postdocs, many of these people now have their own labs, and three of them have even acquired their own ERC grants (Guilliams, Scott and Janssens) and one even a Howard-Hugues Grant (Osorio).