Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "Strengthening the current Bsc. Programme Construction Engineering and infrastructure of the University of Suriname and feasibility study for the extension of the Bsc. Programme into a regional Msc. Programme in Urban Design." "Koen Van de vreken" "Research Group for Urban Development, Henry van de Velde" "Strengthening the current Bsc. Programme Construction Engineering and infrastructure of the University of Suriname and feasibility study for the extension of the Bsc. Programme into a regional Msc. Programme in Urban Design Collaborative engineering experiences in international teams." "MSC/MAPC-based modulation of the immune/inflammatory mechanisms underlying bone marrow failure in MDS." "Catherine Verfaillie" "Stem Cell and Developmental Biology" "Primary myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) are heterogeneous clonal blood stem cell disorders, causing poor production of mature blood cells and eventually leading to acute leukemia. MDS is the most common blood stem cell disorder with a yearly incidence of more than 300 patients in Belgium. The etiology of bone marrow (BM) failure in MDS is multifactorial and is believed to be caused by genetic defects in the blood stem cell and/or abnormalities in the immune system and the BM microenvironment. As medications that modulate the immune system and cells in the BM microenvironment improve blood cell production, we will here test in cell cultures as well as in MDS mouse models if stem cells (MSC and MAPC) derived from donor BM, which are known to be strong immunomodulators and which are part of the BM microenvironment, can improve blood cell production. These studies will be accompanied by studies aimed at following the development of MDS and the fate of the grafted stem cells in mice non-invasively, as well as extensive longitudinal characterization of the immune signature in MDS patients and MDS mouse models." "MAPC - based modulation of the immune/inflammatory mechanism underlying bone marrow faillure in MDS." "Catherine Verfaillie" "Stem Cell and Developmental Biology" "The evaluation of the effect of bone marrow-derived MAPCs as possible therapy for MDS." "MSC/MAPC-based modulation of the immune/inflammatory mechanisms underlying bone marrow failure in MDS." "Catherine Verfaillie" "Stem Cell and Developmental Biology" "Primary myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) are heterogeneous clonal blood stem cell disorders, causing poor production of mature blood cells and eventually leading to acute leukemia. MDS is the most common blood stem cell disorder and in Belgium, more than 300 new patients are annually diagnosed with this disease. The etiology of bone marrow (BM) failure in MDS is multifactorial and is believed to be caused by genetic defects in the blood stem cell and/or abnormalities in the immune system and the BM microenvironment. As medications that modulate the immune system and cells in the BM microenvironment improve blood cell production, we will here test in cell cultures as well as in MDS mouse models if stem cells (MSC and MAPC) derived from donor BM, which are known to be strong immunomodulators and which are part of the BM microenvironment, can improve blood cell production. These studies will be accompanied by studies aimed at following the development of MDS and the fate of the grafted stem cells in mice non-invasively, as well as extensive longitudinal characterization of the immune signature in MDS patients and MDS mouse models." "M.Sc. in Physical Land Resources" "Eric Van Ranst" "Department of Geology, Department of Soil Management" "Interuniversity (UGent-VUB) and interfaculty master programme in Physical Land Resources oriented towards developing countries. It is a full-time, two year programme, and all courses are lectured in English. There are two main subjects: Soil Science and Land Resources Engineering." "Development of a MSc program in Agri-Food Science in Ibagué, Colombia" "A MSc degree in agri-food sciences will be initiated at the Universidad de Ibagué. Crucial in this project is local capacity building which will be realised throughout the training of 2 persons on PhD level and several others on MSc level. In the starting phase, the MSc program will be supported by the Association Ghent University in the framework of this project." "Efficient VCO ADCs with up to 100 MHz bandwidth" "Pieter Rombouts" "Department of Electronics and information systems" "Due to CMOS technology scaling, conventional analog-to-digital converter (ADC) paradigms are reaching their limits. For this reason, less-conventional analog-to-digital converter structures such as voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs) will be needed in the future. In theory, such VCO ADCs can have an equal or even better efficiency than the best conventional ADCs. Unfortunately, until now, this high efficiency has only been demonstrated for relatively low bandwidths (for instance audio). In particular for the bandwidth range of 10 to 100 MHz, there is a significant performance gap. This frequency range is important for a variety of applications, e.g. ultrasound imaging, high bandwidth current sensors, broadband AM/FM. It is the objective of this PhD research project to close this performance gap. For this, new and improved readout circuits will be invented. These improved readout circuits will enable more sophisticated readout architectures with better resolution compared to existing solutions. These architectures will be optimized and developed up to the level of fully functional integrated circuits." "Efficient VCO ADCs with up to 100 MHz bandwidth" "Pieter Rombouts" "Department of Electronics and information systems" "Due to CMOS technology scaling, conventional analog-to-digital converter (ADC) paradigms are reaching their limits. For this reason, less-conventional analog-to-digital converter structures such as voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs) will be needed in the future. In theory, such VCO ADCs can have an equal or even better efficiency than the best conventional ADCs. Unfortunately, until now, this high efficiency has only been demonstrated for relatively low bandwidths (for instance audio). In particular for the bandwidth range of 10 to 100 MHz, there is a significant performance gap. This frequency range is important for a variety of applications, e.g. ultrasound imaging, high bandwidth current sensors, broadband AM/FM. It is the objective of this PhD research project to close this performance gap. For this, new and improved readout circuits will be invented. These improved readout circuits will enable more sophisticated readout architectures with better resolution compared to existing solutions. These architectures will be optimized and developed up to the level of fully functional integrated circuits." "Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) to study interactions in complex food systems" "Koen Dewettinck" "Department of Food Technology, Safety and Health, Department of Green Chemistry and Technology" "Food products are structured composites of lipids, proteins and carbohydrates. Understanding the complex interactions between these components and their behavior during processing, storage and consumption, is a prerequisite to design more nutritious, sustainable and tasty foods. To achieve this, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) is an indispensable tool allowing the study of phase or state transitions involved in food ingredients and end products, including glass transition, melting and crystallization properties, protein denaturation and starch gelatinization. This project intends the procurement of a state of the art DSC with autosampler to replace the current outdated equipment. As DSC is an essential and basic tool within food structure research, the new equipment, showing better resolution and sensitivity, will allow continuation and expansion of the research portfolio in a global context of protein shift and reformulation towards innovative plant-based foods." "Unravelling the subtle nature of lignin depolymerization using online coupled GPC-comprehensive 2DGC equipped with a versatile pyrolysis interfacing" "Jeroen Lauwaert" "Department of Materials, Textiles and Chemical Engineering" "Adequate identification and quantification of chemically diverse mixtures containing non-volatile components is far from straightforward, particularly since they are no longer compatible with gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis. The lack of suitable analytical techniques for such mixtures is currently hampering research which could advance evolutions towards a circular economy, e.g., the replacement of petrochemical aromatics by green alternatives produced via lignin depolymerization. Two-dimensional liquid chromatography (LCxLC) is capable of separating these non-volatiles, but lacks the versatility and general ease-of-use of GC-MS in electron impact (EI) mode. Therefore, in this project, a novel analysis technique, which combines the capacity of gel permeation chromatography (GPC) to separate non-volatiles with the unmatched separation and identification power of two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC×GC-MS) will be developed. First, GPC and pyrolysis-GCxGC-MS will be coupled in an offline mode and the parameters of both techniques will be optimized. Subsequently, the hardware will be integrated into a single configuration with online hyphenation. In parallel, an innovative visualization and interpretation method for the huge amounts of data generated with the envisioned analysis technique will be developed. Finally, the analytical power of the novel technique in the intended application will be showcased in a proof-of-concept case study."