معرفی
Tom Beckers is a Research Professor of Psychology at KU Leuven's Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, where he also serves as Chair of the KU Leuven Research Council. He is affiliated with the Center for Learning Psychology and Experimental Psychopathology and is a member of the KU Leuven Brain Institute. His research focuses on fundamental processes of learning and memory in humans and rodents, with particular emphasis on fear conditioning and its relation to psychopathology.
Beckers obtained his PhD from KU Leuven in 2002. Following this, he served as an FWO Research Fellow at KU Leuven (2002-2008), visiting assistant professor at Binghamton University (2003-2004), and visiting scholar at UCLA (2007). He was assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam (2008), became associate research professor at KU Leuven (2010), and was promoted to full professor in 2014. From 2013-2014, he was visiting professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Currently, he is also a DFG Mercator Fellow affiliated with University of Marburg RTG 2271.
Professor Beckers' research primarily investigates learning and memory processes, with particular focus on fear conditioning, emotional learning, and their relation to anxiety disorders, ADHD, and substance use disorders. His work employs behavioral, neurobiological, and computational techniques across both human and rodent models. A significant portion of his research examines how fear memories are formed, maintained, and extinguished, with implications for understanding and treating anxiety disorders. His laboratory has made important contributions to the understanding of fear generalization, avoidance behavior, and the neural mechanisms underlying emotional learning. Recent work has increasingly focused on the role of control perception in fear learning, sex differences in avoidance behavior, and the potential of directed forgetting techniques to disrupt emotional memories.
- ERC Consolidator Grant (€2,000,000, 2015-2021)
- NWO Innovation Scheme (Vidi) Grant (€800,000, 2010-2015)
- FWO Scientific Research Network Grant (€62,500, 2017-2022)
- FWO Research Grant (€308,000, 2015-2019)
- InterUniversity Attraction Pole (€500,000, 2012-2017)
- FWO Research Grant (€350,000, 2011-2015)
Professor Beckers has supervised numerous PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, including Joaquín Matías Alfei, Anastasia Chalkia, Laura Luyten, Natalie Schroyens, and many others. His mentorship has contributed to the training of the next generation of researchers in the field of learning and memory. His laboratory, part of the Center for Learning Psychology and Experimental Psychopathology at KU Leuven, maintains active research programs using both human and rodent models to investigate fundamental learning processes and their clinical implications. Current research projects include investigations into fear conditioning mechanisms (2025-2028), Pavlovian conditioning of psychophysiological responses (2025-2031), uncertainty tolerance in anxiety disorders (2025-2027), and memory trace disruption as treatment (2024-2028).
