Videos

In the few minutes you watch this video, you breathe in thousands of fine dust particles. And did you know that this particulate matter can be found in your brain as early as 24 hours later? Biomedicist Kenneth Vanbrabant counts particulate matter particles in brain sections of deceased people. In this way, he wants to gather enough evidence so that governments can draw up better regulations for our air quality.

Did you know that exercising is not only good for your health, but also has a positive impact on your immune system? Only scientists don't know exactly why. Lena Fonteyn dives deeper into the mystery of myokines - substances your muscle cells produce during exercise. "If we can unravel this secret, we can help you train your immune system and maybe reach 100 in a healthy way!"

Sujith Reddy is working on perovskites, a promising new solar cell technology that captures more sunlight and costs less than conventional solar cells. Sounds great, right! But there's a catch: these perovskite solar cells ironically tend to break down when exposed to ... light. Sujith wants to uncover the mechanisms behind this degradation in order to improve perovskites and to use them on a larger scale.

Fighting cancer with wisdom teeth - it almost sounds like the tooth fairy's fairy tale. And yet it is a fairy tale that could well come true. Jolien Van den Bosch (UHasselt) wants to use stem cells from wisdom teeth to develop a new therapy against cancer. One could even say she's fighting ... tooth and nail to make this happen.

Meet Sarra Zaghbouni. She unleashes nano-sized diamonds to decode the brain's secrets! 💎🧠 Teaming up with physicists, she's creating these tiny carbon heroes that sense and control temperature, allowing her to study how this affects the growth of neurons 🌡️ This research could help accelerate healing after brain injuries!

A stupid accident, cancer, or a hernia - it can all cause a spinal cord injury in which certain parts of your body are then paralysed. But there is also a hidden effect - an effect in the blood, explains Naomi Veeningen (UHasselt) 🩸

Biologist Nikol Kmentová is fascinated by ... parasites. Why? Because they are the most successful life form on earth. To find out why they are the true champions of life on Earth, Nikol tries to unravel the secrets of these fascinating creatures in the depths of Lake Tanganyika in Africa. In this video, she reveals the strategies that allow parasites to thrive in one of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet!

Have you ever heard of the mysterious "crazy root disease"? Sounds like something you'd rather not have in your garden or greenhouse, right? 🌱 Find out more about this bizarre plant disease and how the VIB and the KU Leuven are determined to get rid of it! 💡✨

Did you know that AI can help doctors detect breast cancer? Or that it can be used to predict sepsis, a life-threatening condition, in premature babies? AI seems to be a great advancement in many ways, yet many people fear or don't trust the technology. Ignace Decroix wants to identify what exactly causes people to have more or less trust in AI.

Why is it that some plants like moss stay very small, while others grow to become large trees? 🌳 "There's still a lot that we don't know about how plants grow exactly", says Max Minne (VIB - UGent). To find out more Max uses an innovative technique that allows him to look at every single cell in the plant and unravel how the hormone cytokinin, responsible for plant growth, impacts each one of them. 

Up to 25% of the cells present in lung cancer tumours are currently ignored. As such, we don't know what the role of these so-called B cells is. "It is crucial to figure that out because we cannot efficiently fight something we do not fully understand," says Pauline Bardet (VUB - VIB - FWO).

In her PhD, she wants to get to the bottom of those B cells and thus find out whether those cells are "good guys" or "bad guys".

Roughly every 5 minutes someone on this planet dies of ALS, and the sad truth is that we still do not have an effective treatment to cure this disease. The problem lies in the fact that we do not fully understand what causes ALS in the first place. In his doctorate, Jimmy Beckers is trying to solve a piece of the puzzle. He is investigating whether a malfunction in our internal cellular recycling system might be linked to ALS.