Belgian Research in Europe by Offset5

Belgian Research 2017_Mise en page 1 06/02/2017 09:34 Page118

Consolidating the Research status of the “Université catholique de Louvain” An interview with Prof. Vincent BLONDEL, Rector of the “Université catholique de Louvain” (UCL) of Europe, despite limiting its number of members. The aim of the organisation is to contribute to addressing major societal issues in Europe by promoting the role of research in finding innovative solutions. UCL is one of two Belgian universities - along with UGent - to have been selected to join this new organisation.

he Louvain 2020 plan establishes the objectives of UCL from now until 2020. In terms of research, what are these objectives? With regard to research, UCL is a Research University and intends to reinforce this positioning. I also specify that 2016-2017 is the Louvain year of scientific adventure and that this red thread marks many of our activities. In practical terms, we had defined 5 axes: to recruit and keep researchers whose results are internationally recognized; to set up a coaching and accompaniment system for researchers to reduce their administrative burden and free up creative time for them; to use our own means as a lever for obtaining external funding; to support postgraduate training and attract foreign postgraduate students; to reinforce our promotional work, make researchers more aware of the issue.

UCL is also pleased to have leaped up 39 places in the Times Higher Education 2016-17 rankings, where it now occupies 128 th position.

What are the key figures for research at UCL? 225,000,000€ was granted to research in 2015 (including 173 million for external contracts). 30% of the university’s overall budget comes from external credits obtained by UCL researchers. The university also issued 259 postgraduate degrees in 2014-2015 and has a total of 21 research institutes, over 3,000 researchers, 29 technology platforms, 29 ERC Grants and 21 Francqui Prize-winners. UCL is the leading university in the French community in terms of taking part in European programmes.

Is this policy bearing its fruits? Yes absolutely. This year, we received more applications and more results for the European Research Council (ERC) scholarships: 7 scholarships for the 2015 round and 6 for the 2016 round, but we still don’t have all the results. We collaborated with the Wallinov project in the Wallonia Region along with our Research Administration team in order to optimise projects and contracts. We have also increased the visibility of our FNRS researchers’ carreers. We must now consolidate and maintain our efforts.

The team of Prof. Françoise Van Bambeke of the Louvain Drug Research Institute of UCL and KU Leuven demonstrated how a drug used against fungal infections (caspofungin) makes a class of antibiotics (fluoroquinolones) very effective with respect to golden staphylococcus biofilms.

118

Profs Nathalie Delzenne and Patrice Cani received the Lucien Dautrebande International Prize. Their research group was one of the first to demonstrate that the nutritional modulation of the intestinal microbiota is capable of influencing the onset of cardio-metabolic disorders, paving the way for new therapeutic management.

I would also like to mention UCL’s participation in the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities, which unites the forces of research universities across a representative territory

Can you tell us something about the areas of excellence of research at UCL and the Louvain4 consortiums? The University excels in a variety of areas such as nutrition, pain relief, mathematics, philosophy, microbiology, climatology, economics, oncology, political science, education, new materials. If we look at participation in the 7 th European framework programme, UCL has a total of 174 projects in nanoscience, transport, safety, science and society, and 61 projects already funded under Horizon 2020.