The VIB Alumni Award
The VIB Alumni Award
The Award
Since its establishment in 1996, VIB has become a widespread international community of more than 1,800 scientists and support personnel currently working at VIB, and over 5,000 VIB Alumni who are now employed by a variety of national and international universities, research centers, companies, governments, hospitals, etc. Our VIB Alumni initiatives see to it that both communities stay connected.
After the celebration of VIB’s 20th anniversary, the VIB Alumni board launched a new Alumni initiative in recognition of a commendable alumnus. This creates visibility not only for the nominated alumni, but also for their former VIB lab and the whole VIB community.
Next call for the Alumni Award will open end of 2024.
The VIB Alumni Award Laureate 2023!
Melanie Matheu, winner of the fourth edition of the VIB Alumni Award, was interviewed when she received the award in May 2023. We asked her what it meant for her to win the award.
Dr. Melanie Matheu did her PhD and two postdocs at UC Irvine, VIB (Bart Lambrecht lab), and UCSF, after which she founded Prellis Biologics, a startup developing ultrafast technology for high-resolution 3D bioprinting. She is currently CTO of Prellis.
Previous Laureates
Melanie Matheu
“Turning an idea into reality is an immensely rewarding experience”
Rafael Van den Bergh
"It’s an absolute pleasure to win this award. It is a lovely recognition that the more applied, humanitarian research that I’m currently involved in is still on the same spectrum as the more academic research that VIB conducts."
Lothar Steidler
"Beyond the initial eureka moment, applied biological research offers few moments of public recognition and hardly any are as rewarding as when receiving recognition for its societal impact. The VIB Alumni Award is one of such recognitions."
Peter Van Loo
"It was a wonderful recognition of my work after leaving VIB and I’m extremely grateful that my original scientific home chose to recognize my work with this wonderful award."
