Dries Bongaerts

Dries Bongaerts is a Researcher at the Department of Bio-engineering Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, within the Faculty of Sciences and Bioengineering Sciences. His work focuses on industrial microbiology, fermentation technology, and microbial ecology in food biotechnology.

• Research Interests: Fermentation processes, acetic acid bacteria, microbial diversity in lambic beer, functional starter cultures, and environmental sustainability in food production.
• Projects: Lead contributor to the GEAR project (IOF3017) on industrial food biotechnology.

Publication Trends: Recent articles analyze microbial dynamics in fruit beers, novel bacterial taxa in sour beverages, and lambic beer microbiota. Subfields span brewing science, metabolomics, acetic acid production, and beverage microbiology.

Conference Activities: Presented on acetic acid bacteria isolation, microbial diversity in lambic beer, and alternative yeast applications for bread production at international conferences in 2024.

Grants & Collaborations: Part of the GEAR project (2021–2025) with collaborators including Luc De Vuyst and Peter Vandamme. Research spans fermented foods, environmental sustainability, and microbial taxonomy.