Videos

An aortic aneurysm is a bulging of the large body artery. If such an aneurysm bursts, the patient can die. You'd think you'd better have surgery for this immediately, but such an operation is complex and risky. That is why engineer Klaas Vander Linden (KU Leuven)is trying to predict whether an aneurysm will burst.

In this video, Elke Emmers (KU Leuven) takes you on a speed date with a real plot twist. In her research she tries to adjust the attitudes of teachers, remedial educationalists and other professionals towards persons with disabilities. 

What do bone marrow, liver and a tumor have in common? They all consist of so-called "soft tissue", which is not easily visualized by a CT scan. In order to study it, therefore, one has to extract pieces from a patient's body. Sarah Vangrunderbeeck wants to help change this.

Quitting smoking is quite a challenge. In her PhD, Karolien Adriaens (KU Leuven) shows that the e-cigarette is an effective tool to help smokers eventually get rid of their addiction.

Chemotherapy affects the brains of patients. It can lead to cognitive complaints, stress, and fatigue. Michelle Melis achieves promising results with mindfulness in patients with breast cancer. 

The coronavirus pandemic has drastically reduced air traffic. But did you know that normally some 3,000 planes fly over Belgium every day? Katharina Schopf (KU Leuven) investigates the role of air traffic controllers and their leaders in ensuring that there are no airborne collisions

What is the link between a smoothie and the analysis of cancer tumours? Well, Sebastiaan Vanuytven explains it smooth(l)y in this video

Have you ever broken one of your cherished devices, but had to dump it because you couldn't fix it? Julie Metta (KU Leuven) wants to help us reclaim our belongings, by uncovering local heroes, called the Makers.

Do you also love bread? Belgians eat an average of 33 kg of bread a year, about 1,000 slices. But that's mostly white bread, which doesn't contain much fibre. To make us eat more of that healthy fibre, Sara Petit-Jean (KU Leuven) is working on new, high-fibre white bread.

To make the production of plastics and other chemical processes less energy-intensive and waste-producing, Max Bols turns to nature. Enzymes, the catalysts of living cells, hold the key to improve chemical processes, as he explains in this video. 

A dog's nose is one of the most powerful sensors we have. Trained dogs are even able to detect early signs of certain diseases by sniffing our breath. As this would not be very practical, Alex Cruz is looking to integrate a doglike 'nose' in our smartphones to do the trick.

Melanoma is a very common and lethal type of skin cancer. Melanoma cells have a strange, yet effective defence mechanism called autophagy: they can manage to survive by eating parts of themselves. Monica Vara Perez tries to figure out this self-cannibalism mechanism in order to help defeat melanoma.