Tom Van de Wiele is a full professor at the Center for Microbial Ecology and Technology (CMET) from Ghent University, Belgium. For more than 2 decades, he specializes in designing and validating novel in vitro enabling technology platforms for studying host-microbe interactions. The main research emphasis is put on the gastrointestinal tract, but the Van de Wiele lab also studies microbial ecosystems from the oral cavity, skin, respiratory environment and reproductive tract.

The different model systems at prof. Van de Wiele’s lab are used to conduct mode-of-action research on the dynamics and functionality of microbial ecosystems in health and disease at different body sites. This yields complementary information helping to better understand human in vivo observations and advancing the fields of Nutrition and Functional Foods, Live Biotherapeutics and Drug development.

Prof. Van de Wiele is a Ghent University MSc and PhD graduate in the fields of Environmental Engineering and Bioscience Engineering and he was a research scholar at the University of Saskatchewan (SK, Canada) and Ohio State University (OH, USA). He received fellowships from the FWO National Science foundation, was twice a Highly-cited researcher (2021, 2022) in Clarivate’s list of academic authors in the Cross-Field discipline and he obtained a fast-track promotion to full professor in 2020. Research from the Van de Wiele lab resulted in over 300 peer-reviewed publications (h-index 76), five granted patents and it contributed to the creation of two spin-off companies active in the fields of gastrointestinal contract research and live biotherapeutics development.