Farmers rely heavily on chemical fertilizers to boost crop yields, but this approach comes at a cost to soil quality, biodiversity, and plant fertility. Soil microbes may provide greener alternatives to help plants grow better under tough conditions like drought by triggering faster growth and earlier flowering. The intended result? Improved crop yields when water is scarce.
Insect pests are a major cause of quality and economic losses in agriculture. Due to policy constraints that aim for a greener future, the use of general pesticides is being phased out, and a push towards species-specific pesticides and biological control methods is being promoted. But these methods require the pest species to first be identified, which is costly. AI could help speed up this process, thus reducing costs and helping us push towards a greener tomorrow.
As a sector, agrifood biotech has enormous potential to improve the sustainability, resilience, and productivity of our food systems. Yet many promising innovations still fail to reach the market, often because they are not sufficiently aligned with real-world needs or adoption barriers. The B-Trust project aims to involve end-users from the start, to help make agrifood R&D more relevant, equitable, and impactful.
An increasing number of PhD students are concerned about their career prospects. Currently, only around 5-10% of PhD graduates remain in academia — the vast majority have to navigate an unfamiliar job market, where industry demand for their highly educated profiles appears to be in decline. Is a PhD still the best route to professional success? And what can students do to prepare themselves?
Behind the vivid colors of our phone screens and smartwatches lies a world too small for the naked eye to see. But scientists at the University of Antwerp have developed a new method to analyze small changes in the atomic arrangement of the nanomaterials in these kinds of digital displays, which is key to creating stable and efficient materials for solar cells or electronics in the future.
Recently at the Medicon Valley Alliance Summit in Copenhagen, the spotlight was on European competitiveness. In a keynote, panelists from four of Europe’s leading life sciences hubs shared their intention to establish a “Champions League” of clusters, working as a team to strengthen health innovation for Europe as a whole.
Biovia is Europe’s first industry-led One Health innovation cluster—uniting medical biotech, medtech, digital health, agtech and industrial biotech to advance human and planetary health. Katrien Lorré explains how this unified approach benefits companies by unlocking opportunities and fostering a better environment for health innovation.
Researchers are sounding the alarm – there could be as much as a spoon’s worth of plastic inside our brain. Industrial activity, tire dust, lost fishing gear, and excessive use of disposable plastics are important drivers of microplastic pollution in our environment and, ultimately, in our bodies. While the full impact on human health is still being investigated, the fact that these particles can migrate into deeper tissues of our brain, crossing the blood-brain barrier, is worrying to say the least.
A fresh chapter in Flemish healthtech and life sciences has begun with the launch of Biovia: the health innovation cluster resulting from the merger of flanders.bio and MEDVIA. Unveiled at Knowledge for Growth, the flagship annual conference of the Flemish life sciences sector, this new industry-driven organization brings more than 450 members together in one unified ecosystem – cultivating connections and forging a path to a healthier future for people and planet.
The world is more interconnected than ever. But our global network goes beyond humans: the health of all people on Earth is intimately dependent on the wellbeing of our ecosystems – our animals, plants, microbes, and the atmosphere that sustains us all. In this article, Belgian veterinary scientist Jan Spaas shares his thoughts on the ‘One Health’ approach from the WHO, and the bi-directional link between human and animal health.
Farmers rely heavily on chemical fertilizers to boost crop yields, but this approach comes at a cost to soil quality, biodiversity, and plant fertility. Soil microbes may provide greener alternatives to help plants grow better under tough conditions like drought by triggering faster growth and earlier flowering. The intended result? Improved crop yields when water is scarce.
Insect pests are a major cause of quality and economic losses in agriculture. Due to policy constraints that aim for a greener future, the use of general pesticides is being phased out, and a push towards species-specific pesticides and biological control methods is being promoted. But these methods require the pest species to first be identified, which is costly. AI could help speed up this process, thus reducing costs and helping us push towards a greener tomorrow.
As a sector, agrifood biotech has enormous potential to improve the sustainability, resilience, and productivity of our food systems. Yet many promising innovations still fail to reach the market, often because they are not sufficiently aligned with real-world needs or adoption barriers. The B-Trust project aims to involve end-users from the start, to help make agrifood R&D more relevant, equitable, and impactful.
An increasing number of PhD students are concerned about their career prospects. Currently, only around 5-10% of PhD graduates remain in academia — the vast majority have to navigate an unfamiliar job market, where industry demand for their highly educated profiles appears to be in decline. Is a PhD still the best route to professional success? And what can students do to prepare themselves?
Behind the vivid colors of our phone screens and smartwatches lies a world too small for the naked eye to see. But scientists at the University of Antwerp have developed a new method to analyze small changes in the atomic arrangement of the nanomaterials in these kinds of digital displays, which is key to creating stable and efficient materials for solar cells or electronics in the future.
Recently at the Medicon Valley Alliance Summit in Copenhagen, the spotlight was on European competitiveness. In a keynote, panelists from four of Europe’s leading life sciences hubs shared their intention to establish a “Champions League” of clusters, working as a team to strengthen health innovation for Europe as a whole.
Biovia is Europe’s first industry-led One Health innovation cluster—uniting medical biotech, medtech, digital health, agtech and industrial biotech to advance human and planetary health. Katrien Lorré explains how this unified approach benefits companies by unlocking opportunities and fostering a better environment for health innovation.
Researchers are sounding the alarm – there could be as much as a spoon’s worth of plastic inside our brain. Industrial activity, tire dust, lost fishing gear, and excessive use of disposable plastics are important drivers of microplastic pollution in our environment and, ultimately, in our bodies. While the full impact on human health is still being investigated, the fact that these particles can migrate into deeper tissues of our brain, crossing the blood-brain barrier, is worrying to say the least.
A fresh chapter in Flemish healthtech and life sciences has begun with the launch of Biovia: the health innovation cluster resulting from the merger of flanders.bio and MEDVIA. Unveiled at Knowledge for Growth, the flagship annual conference of the Flemish life sciences sector, this new industry-driven organization brings more than 450 members together in one unified ecosystem – cultivating connections and forging a path to a healthier future for people and planet.
The world is more interconnected than ever. But our global network goes beyond humans: the health of all people on Earth is intimately dependent on the wellbeing of our ecosystems – our animals, plants, microbes, and the atmosphere that sustains us all. In this article, Belgian veterinary scientist Jan Spaas shares his thoughts on the ‘One Health’ approach from the WHO, and the bi-directional link between human and animal health.