Videos

In Belgium, 10,000 cyclists are injured in traffic accidents every year. While helmets help reduce skill fractures, they often don't protect cyclists from brain injuries. Andrea Menichetti (KU Leuven) studies how much our brain can deform before getting injured in order to help manufacturers produce safer helmets.

Did you know that colon cancer is the third most deadly cancer worldwide? Unfortunately, while immunotherapy is quite effective in the treatment of many cancers, such as skin cancer, it only works in 5% of colon cancer patients. Sara Verbandt (KU Leuven) explains how she wants to make immunotherapy stand up against colon cancer.

Immunotherapy is a very promising therapy for cancer, but only 15 to 30% of the patients respond to this kind of therapy. Giving immunotherapy to patients without knowing whether they will respond is expensive and can even harm them. That's why Madhavi Andhari is looking for markers to tell apart responders from non-responders.

A smart speaker can make our lives easier by acting as our home assistant and helping us manage our daily tasks. But what about our privacy? Can we trust these devices with our family arguments over money spending? By designing technologies and workflows, engineer Rafa Gálvez wants to help companies develop smart devices that respect our privacy. 

Can you recover from aphasia after a stroke? And how long does it take? At the moment no doctor can immediately answer these questions. Klara Schevenels (KU Leuven) wants to give patients with aphasia after a stroke a quick and reliable prognosis so that they have a reliable window on the future.

Watching a baby grow up is fascinating, isn't it? Especially that magical moment when it takes its first steps as a toddler. But did you know that one in five hundred babies is born with a permanent brain injury and may never be able to walk independently? Nathalie De Beukelaer (KU Leuven) hopes to change this with her research👇

Out of breath after just eight steps up the stairs? That is the case every day for the 600,000 people in Belgium with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Physiotherapist Astrid Blondeel (KU Leuven) wants to help them using a personalised coaching programme and a smartphone app.

Sofie Claerhout's doctorate was looking for a new way to trace offenders in a murder case on the basis of DNA found at the crime scene. Using DNA kinship analysis, she can map out distant kinships, up to 40 generations apart, on the basis of a DNA sample. This makes it possible to trace the perpetrator much more precisely.

Hearing impairments play an important role in dyslexia. For example, people with dyslexia are less able to hear the subtle sound difference at the start of similar letters, such as the 'b' and the 'p'. By offering children adapted audio stories in nursery school, Shauni Van Herck wants to tackle these hearing problems at an early stage.

When you enjoy a day on the beach, you want to make sure to wear sunscreen to avoid sunburn. But did you know that quite a few sunscreens contain nanoparticles to help protect your skin from the sun? The use of nanoparticles is strictly regulated and only a limited amount can be used. Milica Velimirovic (VITO) is developing a new & fast analysis method to measure nanoparticles and their quantity in sunscreen. 

How do we prevent power breaks when everyone starts driving electric vehicles? With smart grid pricing! Niels Govaerts (VITO - KU Leuven - EnergyVille) explains how this works.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased awareness about the importance of indoor ventilation. But measuring indoor air quality and ventilation rates often requires eco-unfriendly substances or complex and expensive equipment. Luckily, Sarah Lima Paralovo (Universiteit Gent - VITO) is developing a simple method to measure ventilation rates.