Videos

"Several people with visual impairments use screen readers, which means that if an app or a website is not built with accessibility in mind, some information may not be noticeable to them at all."
Through her research, Olga Gkotsopoulou (VUB) wants to raise awareness and help organizations make information about our personal data accessible to the widest audience possible. 

A personal data breach is not to be taken lightly: it can lead to depression, divorce, and even death. Seems far-fetched? Not really, as the data breach of a Canadian adultery website showed in 2015. Lina Jasmontaite (VUB) researches how companies (should) handle data breaches in Europe, since the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). 

Over the past five years, solid progress has been made in the fight against cancer, but unfortunately, that does not apply to pancreatic cancer. So what makes this cancer so hard to beat? Olaya Lara (VUB) explains this by comparing it to a football match. She also tells you what tactics she figures out to sideline xCT, the Lionel Messi in the pancreatic cancer team. 

The fight against breast cancer does not stop with overcoming cancer. 1 in 3 women continue to experience pain symptoms even during a harmless activity such as cycling. Physiotherapist Eva Roose (VUB) wants to help these breast cancer survivors reset their pain alarms.

Developing new drugs often requires a lot of animal testing. But what if we could develop drugs with fewer laboratory animals? That is what Lianne van Os is doing. Based on 1 mouse liver, she makes some 600 mini-livers in the lab to test new drugs against liver disease.

You all know the story of the frog prince, but we bet you haven't yet heard this "sticky" version by evolutionary biologist Shabnam Zaman... She is researching frog glue, a defense mechanism found in certain frog species, that could one day help you 🐸 Watch the video - we're pretty sure you will be glued to your screen. 

"Freeze your eggs, free your career". This was the headline on the cover of the business magazine Bloomberg Business a few years ago. The reasoning: women could freeze their eggs, to focus on their careers and then maybe have a child later. Sounds good for women's emancipation, but how do women themselves feel about it? Philosopher Michiel De Proost sat down with 21 women to find out.

We've all seen images of spectacular collapses of large structures, such as the Morandi Bridge in Genoa. What if we could prevent the failure of structures such as bridges, dams, and wind turbines by ... listening to these structures? That's exactly what engineer Maximillian Weil (VUB) is working on. Listen to him talk about good vibrations.

Why do cancer patients relapse despite receiving treatment? This is often due to dormant cancer cells. These cells lie dormant in the body and manage to escape treatment, for example, chemotherapy. Can substances from camel and llama blood provide a breakthrough?

"I'm going deeper underground" 🎵 The lyrics of Jamiroquai's famous hit may well apply to Renata Barros. As a geologist, she knows how precious the underground is in providing essential minerals for modern-day technology, drinking water, etc. Through the Geoconnect3d project, Renata & her colleagues bring all the information from underground studies all over Europe together in an accessible knowledge system.

Meet Elodie-Laure Jimenez (RBINS - University of Aberdeen). As a zooarchaeologist, her job is to study prehistoric predators and their life during the last Ice Age. The only way to understand what happened to these extinct species is to study the fossils that have survived the test of time. In Belgium, this led Elodie-Laure to identify a den where hundreds of cave hyena cubs died shortly after birth. Find out more about her fascinating research in the video.  

"As researchers, we are not lucky enough to have the budget to crash hundreds of vehicles to test a new technology." So how can researchers test whether a new tiny semiconductor is safe to use in electric vehicles? For this, Sajib Chakraborty (VUB) developed a digital twin. A what? Watch the video to find out more.