Stein Aerts is a full professor at the Faculty of Medicine of KU Leuven and head of the Laboratory for Computational Biology (VIB-KU Leuven). He is affiliated with multiple institutes including VIB.AI Center for AI & Computational Biology, the Leuven Brain Institute, Leuven.AI, LIMNI, LISCO, and the Leuven Cancer Institute. He also serves on the Faculty Council of Medicine and departmental boards. Research Focus: Regulatory genomics and gene regulatory networks Single-cell transcriptomics and epigenomics Deep learning for genomics and enhancer design Neurodevelopmental genomics and evolution Cancer genomics and synthetic biology Comparative genomics across species (Drosophila, octopus, mammals, birds) His recent work emphasizes using AI-driven approaches to decode enhancer logic, model cell-type-specific gene regulation, and understand brain evolution. He leads multiple large-scale projects funded through 2029–2030, including SpaceTimeOmics and enhancer-targeted glioblastoma modeling. Scientific Output: Aerts has a prolific publication record with over 15 high-impact papers in 2024–2025 alone, including in Science , Cell Genomics , Nature Reviews Bioengineering , and eLife . His work spans methodological advances (e.g., HyDrop, CREsted, GAME) and biological discoveries in enhancer function, cell-type evolution, and neurodegeneration models. Institutional Roles & Collaborations: Principal investigator in 10+ active grants (2024–2030) Founder and head of the Computational Biology Laboratory at VIB-KU Leuven Member of steering committees for HPC curriculum and bioinformatics POC Active collaborator across European and international consortia
