Nederlandse taalvaardigheid ontstaat op de lagere en middelbare school. Maar, bro, helaas gaat de lees- en schrijfvaardigheid enorm achteruit. De universiteit kan dit niet repareren. De politiek is aan zet. Verbiedt de gsm op het lager en middelbaar onderwijs en vervang het door een boek en een pen.

Daarnaast doet de universiteit aan outreach activiteiten, zoals Dag van de Wetenschap, om resultaten van onderzoek voor een lekenpubiek toe te lichten.

Toegankelijkheid van wetenschap vergroot je niet door in het Nederlands te publiceren. Je schaadt er eerder de internationale impact mee. Het is de taak van wetenschapsjournalisten (bestaan er nog wetenschapsredacties bij kranten?) om een vertaalslag te maken voor het algemeen publiek.

The chemistry prize must be respected!

After a close friend was diagnosed with cancer, medical student Emeric Bomans at KU Leuven decided to run the Antwerp full marathon on October 19, 2025. I am joining this year as well.
Please consider donating to Emeric’s cause. And any gift above 40 EUR is tax deductable (in Belgium).

Some journeys are even tougher – getting diagnosed and facing a battle with cancer, for example. Fortunately, I have never encountered this, but many people have.

Because phosphonate esters can be steered in their selectivity, we think that these molecules will find future use for real-time imaging of various serine proteases in dynamic processes.

Congrats to first author JP, who did the bulk of the work during his PhD, from chemical synthesis of these challenging molecules, to biochemistry and cell biology. Thanks also to Jonathan, Marcin and Dimitris who performed experiments at the revision stage.

This year, we ran 14.25 km, referring to the year that KU Leuven was founded, now 600 years ago.

Congrats to all authors and thanks to Michel Sanner and Stefano Forli at Scripps for the collaboration.

We think that the SODA building blocks are beneficial because the ID-ing of modification sites is now independent of probe structure, which is particularly attractive for probes that are prone to fragmentation, such as peptide-based probes.

In silico docking revealed that residues in close proximity to the diazirine nitrogen were also amongst the modified residues detected in the LC-MS3 measurements.

As proof of principle, we incorporated the SODA building blocks into Pepstatin A, a natural product that targets aspartic proteases. We were able to covalently modify target proteases, optimize sulfoxide cleavage, and identify the modification site on the target protease.

Are you interested in chemical biology approaches and like to work in an interdisciplinary and international environment, with excellent scientific training possibilities? See above links for details on the projects and how to apply!