Stefaan Verhulst

Stefaan Verhulst (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6566-6071) obtained his PhD in Medical Sciences at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium, in 2018. He subsequently embarked on a postdoctoral journey at the liver cell biology research group in collaboration with Galapagos, focusing on developing a stem cell derived in vitro assay system to evaluate hepatic stellate cell activation. In 2021, he received a junior postdoctoral mandate from Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) to explore novel cell communication signals in healthy and fibrotic livers. In parallel, he became academic director of Flow Cytometry Core Facility (FlowCore at VUB), offering Flow Cytometry services to researchers and provides essential Flow Cytometry guidance. Since 2022, Stefaan became affiliated with Karolinska Institute in Sweden, collaborating with the Emma Andersson lab to investigate fibrosis development in Alagille patients.

His passion lies in bioinformatics, particularly the analysis of (single cell) transcriptomic data to unravel the development of liver fibrosis. He shares his expertise by collaborating with national and international research groups, teaching bioinformatics to bachelor students and instructing master students and researchers in R programming for transcriptomic analysis.