Kris Laukens Lab

Part of the Adrem Data Lab
Department of Computer Science

Kris Laukens is a professor in bioinformatics and biodata mining at the Biomedical informatics research network (biomina) and the Adrem data Lab at the University of Antwerp. His multidisciplinary biodata mining research team has the ambition to remove crucial limitations in the interpretation of big molecular and clinical data with cutting-edge data mining and machine learning technology that transforms complex biomedical data in actionable insights. The developed techniques are used to make novel discoveries in diverse life science areas, ranging from systems biology to personalized medicine.

Affiliations

Core Facility biomedical informatics research network Antwerpen (biomina) (head)
IOF Consortium Precision Medicine Technologies (PreMeT) (head)
Center of Excellence (COE) Microbial Systems technologies (MST) (member)
Antwerp Unit for Data Analysis and Computation in Immunology and Sequencing (Audacis) (member)

Research

Expertise

bioanalytical & biomedical pattern discovery and artificial intelligence
data-driven decision support technologies for precision medicine and digital health
bioinformatics of microbial systems, infectious diseases and immune responses
[gen-/transcript-/prote-/epigen-/metabol-]omics data integration

Research interests

biomolecular pattern discovery: we develop, study and apply data science (pattern discovery, machine learning, artificial intelligence) approaches to make sense of large scale bioanalytical data, often with a focus on the interpretation of unexplained information (e.g. originating from mass spectrometry proteome or metabolome analyses);
from interaction model to biological network: we develop, study and apply methods to model and unravel interactions between biomolecules, and reconstruct large scale models of molecular systems, targetting a variety of biomedical and biotechnological applications.
clinical data mining: we develop, study and apply data mining and artificial intelligence technology to make heterogeneous and complex health data (e.g. patient records, lab results, wearable outputs, hospital sensors, …) clinically actionable.

Publications

The lab has published over 130 peer reviewed journal publications. You can check the official institutional bibliography or Google Scholar profile of Kris Laukens.

Funding

The lab is partner in over 15 million euros in research grants, received from various national and international funding agencies and industry. For a list, check this official overview of funded projects.

Collaborations with industry, hospitals and third parties

The lab holds a long list of academic and non-academic collaborators, including hospitals (UZA), research institutes (ITM, Vito, VIB, SCK) and diverse pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

Members & Alumni

Lab head:

Prof. dr. Kris Laukens

Managers:

dr. Julia Gauglitz

Associated staff:

Prof. dr. ir. Pieter Meysman

Postdoctoral researchers:

PhD Students:

Technical staff:

Alumni:

dr. Thanh Hai Dang (defended in 2012)
Prof. dr. Trungh Nghia Vu (defended in 2014)
dr. Stefan Naulaerts (defended in 2016)
Prof. dr. Wout Bittremieux (defended in 2017)
dr. Bart Cuypers (defended in 2018)
dr. Aida Mrzić (defended in 2018)
dr. Dries Van Rompaey (visiting scientist until 2018)
dr. Matthias Cuyckx (defended in 2019)
dr. Charlie Beirnaert (defended in 2019)
dr. Nicolas De Neuter (defended in 2020)
dr. Stijn Van Hees (defended in 2020)
dr. Joris Van Houtven (defended in 2021)
dr. Pieter Moris (defended in 2021)
dr. Danh Bui (defended in 2022)
dr. Youzhong Liu (postdoctoral researcher until 2020)
dr. Auchi Inaleghwu (defended in 2022)
dr. Emmanuel Rivière (defended in 2023)
dr. Wim Cuypers (defended in 2023)
dr. Katlijn De Meulenaere (defended in 2023)
dr. Lennert Verboven (defended in 2023)
dr. Lin Zi (defended in 2023)

Spin-offs and tech-transfer

The lab is actively seeking opportunities to transform its technology into societal and economical impactful solutions, through licensing its intellectual property portfolio to third parties. Research at the Laukens lab has led to two spin-off companies, and several proof-of-concept and venture incorporation trajectories are in the pipeline.

ImmuneWatch BV is a bioinformatics spin-off company created to accelerate the development of T-cell based diagnostic tools and therapies using bioinformatics and AI. The mission is to make immune repertoire data interpretable and actionable by annotating T-cell receptors in a clinically meaningful way. It was co-founded in 2021 by team members Kris Laukens and Pieter Meysman based on patented in house developed technology.

Innocens BV is a digital health spin-off company based on a collaboration between the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the University Hospital of Antwerp (UZA), the Adrem Data Lab and industry partner (IBM). Innocens is an acronym that stands for Improving Neonatal Outcome with a Clinical Early Notification System. It is a Clinical Decision Support System based on Artificial Intelligence technology, currently including a predictive model for Late onset Sepsis.

Education

The lab is responsible for a number of courses, mainly at the University of Antwerp, at the interface of life sciences and data sciences. We offer compulsive and elective courses in diverse life science and computational science curricula. Besides these fixed courses, the team is frequently asked to offer specialised and customised trainings to researchers and clinicians in public and industry sectors.

Permanent courses

Bioinformatics (in bachelor and master program biomedicine, biochemistry, biology and computer sciences)
Computational Biology (in bachelor program sciences)
Biomedical Data Mining (in master program biochemistry)
Advanced Data Analysis (in master program biomedicine)
Functional Proteome Analysis (in master program biochemistry)

Internships

We always offer opportunities for bachelor, master, PhD and postdoctoral level internships in the field of bioinformatics, biomedical AI or digital health, for students with life science or computer science backgrounds. Get in touch with us if you want to explore if this could be something for you.