Willem Annaert, PhD

Wim Annaert is a full professor at the KU Leuven and a group leader at the VIB-Center for Brain and Disease, Leuven, Belgium. He obtained his PhD in Biology at the university of Antwerp (Belgium) in 1993 and then moved to Yale University (US, HHMI) for a two-year postdoc under the supervision of Prof. R. Jahn. In 1996 he obtained a FWO-postdoc to move back to Belgium and join the Center for Human Genetics (KU Leuven) where he initiated his research on presenilin biology and Alzheimer’s disease. In 2001 he became an independent investigator and started to build out his research team. In 2008 he was appointed Associate Professor at KU Leuven and in 2012 promoted to Full Professor. Between 2007 and 2015 he was assigned Adjunct Department Director of VIB. In his research he combines state-of-the-art (live) super-resolution up to electron microscopy with molecular biology to unravel how the cellular transport machineries are exploited to regulate intramembrane proteolysis through PSEN/?-secretase. More recently he extended this to new Alzheimer disease mouse models to understand how molecular and organellar changes in neurons and microglia impact on brain function and Alzheimer disease-related pathology. His research resulted thus far in 145 peer-reviewed research papers and reviews including many high impact papers, an H-index of 56 and >14,000 citations.