Prof Dr Anne-Mieke Vandamme was trained as biochemist, and holds a PhD in sciences since 1986. She joined the Rega Institute at the University of Leuven in 1990, where she started a unit on virus genetic testing for clinical practice. Together with Professor Van Ranst, she founded a new division, Clinical and Epidemiological Virology. She recently co-started the “Institute of the future”, a transdisciplinary research incubator.
Anne-Mieke Vandamme and her team perform research on the molecular epidemiology of HIV, HTLV, HCV and arboviruses, on HIV and HCV drug resistance testing in clinical context, and on bioinformatics (data mining, phylogenetic analysis) tools. In the fields of molecular epidemiology and drug resistance, she has an extensive and widely recognized expertise. She has been participating in several European projects (currently ZIKALLIANCE and STEAM+), and supported the development of a few widely used (bioinformatics) tools, the Rega HIV Drug Resistance algorithm, the Rega HIV typing and subtyping tool, and RegaDB, a free and open source software for collecting and sharing HIV epidemiological, clinical and virological data. At the Institute for the Future, she coaches teams that incubate transdisciplinary research projects geared towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She authored more than 400 publications in international journals such as Lancet, Nature Medicine, Lancet Infectious Diseases, PNAS, Journal of Virology, Trends in Microbiology, half of them with first and/or last author from the lab. More than 800 abstracts were presented at International Meetings.
In addition to her research activities, Anne-Mieke Vandamme is founder and organizer of the yearly International Bioinformatics Workshop on Virus Evolution and Molecular Epidemiology (25th in 2020), is co-initiator and co-organizer of the European HIV Drug Resistance Workshop (18th in 2020), is invited professor at the ‘Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical’ (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal) and visiting professor at the Medical School, University of Belgrade, Serbia. She teaches Evolutionary Genetics and Bioinformatics at the University of Leuven, and co-started an Honours Programme on Transdisciplinary Insights. She also launched a new eJournal for the Institute for the Future: Transdisciplinary Insights.
