Patrik Verstreken

Patrik Verstreken is a Belgian neuroscientist, highly cited in his field. His work is focused on the function of neuronal synapses during health and neurological disease. Major contributions include identifying molecular mechanisms by which neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease spread throughout the brain and identification of new defects causing Parkinson's disease.

Verstreken obtained his degree in bio-engineering from the University of Brussels in 1998. He joined the graduate school of biomedical sciences at Baylor College of Medicine and under the mentorship of Hugo Bellen, he obtained a PhD in developmental biology in 2003.

After post-doctoral training and with support of a Marie Curie Excellence grant he became a group leader at Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie and joined the faculty of the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in 2007, at the Center for Human Genetics. In 2016 he became the director of the Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research. He obtained an ERC starting grant in 2011 and an ERC consolidator grant in 2015. Provided by Wikipedia