Lirias (KU Leuven)

This PhD research examines the development of the civil service system and the contribution of Public Administration (PA) education in shaping policy capacity. Using a sequential mixed-methods design and four theoretical frameworks: historical institutionalism, resource dependency theory, the policy capacity framework, and actor-network theory, the study offers an in-depth analysis of civil servi…

status: Accepted

In the last three decades, legislators across the globe have enacted laws concerning companies that commit, in their articles of association and/or through their company form or type, to pursue both the distribution of profits to shareholders and one or more social purposes. These ‘social profit companies’ could contribute to tackling some of the most urgent challenges of our time by harnessing t…

In my PhD, I systematically study the representativeness of the civil service of Pakistan. Pakistan is one of the world´s most complex states because of the diverse population groups and territorial regions (Cohen, 2004). It has a chequered democratic history (Adeney, 2009) marked by imbalances in state institutions particularly in its civil service (Talbot, 2002) which has made it more restricti…

The objective of the thesis is to develop knowledge on gynecologic ultrasound. Specifically I will concentrate myself on the fields of artificial intelligence and three- dimensional ultrasound applied to the ovarian cancer first and later also focus on the three- dimensional ultrasound to endometrial cancer and uterine malformations. I will participate in the already ongoing research projects and…

Living tissues undergo continuous mechanical transitions to grow, remodel, and acquire shape during development and disease. These transitions reflect changes in tissue rigidity, ranging from fluid-like to solid-like states, and are governed by the collective behavior of cells and their interactions. From a physical perspective, these changes in tissue properties can be understood by the jamming …

This dissertation develops statistical inference methods for graphical models where the graph structure has been learned using the data. Standard inference methods assume a given model and become invalid after data-drive edge selection. The thesis addresses this issue through selective inference, which conditions on the selection event and restores valid type I error rate control. The main contri…

Over the last decades, metamaterials (MMs), a class of artificial subwavelength structures, has received much attention due to their unprecedented electromagnetics responses, especially those operating in terahertz (THz) range with various potential applications, such as spatial light modulation, time-domain spectroscopy (TDS), imaging, and wireless communications. In this thesis, THz-MM is inves…

Sensing devices have become increasingly more common due to recent advances in analogue and digital electronics that have made them smaller, more affordable, and capable of performing computations faster and more accurately than in previous times. Furthermore, their cooperation has been enabled by developments in low-power wireless communications. Together, these advances have led to the concept …

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system that affects 2.5 million people worldwide and leads to important physical and cognitive disability with typical onset during young adulthood. Over the past years, the Laboratory for Neuroimmunology (KU Leuven) identified 233 MS genetic risk factors, which are shared with other autoimmune but not neurological disorders …

Healthcare systems are increasingly expected to deliver care that is not only effective and safe, but also responsive to what matters most to patients. Yet, patients' role and influence in drug development, regulatory assessment, and pricing and reimbursement (P&R) evaluations is limited and fragmented. Decision-makers continue to rely predominantly on the perspectives of non-patient stakeholders…

Ferroptosis is a recently discovered form of iron-dependent, genetically regulated, necrotic cell death driven by loss-of function of the lipid repair enzyme glutathione peroxidase 4 (GPX4), which results in accumulation of lipid hydroperoxides and cell death. Moreover, a new ferroptosis suppression pathway, governed by the ferroptosis suppressor protein 1 (FSP1), has been recently defined. Accum…

Linear dynamical models are ubiquitous in sciences and engineering, where they describe all sorts of phenomena, which allows one to analyze, predict, or control the behavior of the underlying system through these models. For various reasons, it is not always possible to obtain such models from first principles. In such cases, one may resort to fitting a model from measurement data, a practice cal…

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are lipid bilayer-enclosed nanoparticles secreted by all cells. They can be released by producing cells to dispose of unwanted material but can also convey signals or transfer biomolecules between cells. Therefore, EVs are currently considered as potential delivery vehicles for therapeutic purposes. EV delivery of cargo into the cytosol of recipient cells typically in…

Irrigation is becoming an increasingly important component of the hydrological cycle in many regions across Europe and the globe. However, information on the location and amounts of water application is not easily obtained. Soil-vegetation models often poorly represent irrigation, but satellite signals should detect irrigation. Consequently, misfits between modeled soil moisture and vegetation si…

Medication use during pregnancy is nearly universal, yet the evidence to guide safe use remains critically limited. Pregnant individuals have historically been excluded from randomised controlled trials, leaving them and their healthcare professionals (HCPs) to weigh the benefits and risks of pharmacological treatment on the basis of incomplete and slowly accruing post-marketing data. This eviden…

status: Accepted

Non-invasive prenatal screening (NIPS) uses fetal cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in maternal plasma to detect aneuploidies early in pregnancy. Because most cfDNA originates from the mother and NIPS is widely used, these datasets offer a large potential resource for genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and polygenic risk score (PRS) analyses. As the NIPS workflow entails generating low-coverage (0.1-0.2×…

status: Accepted

Plastic wastes are so far underexplored as feedstocks for producing 'upcycled' materials. This project, focusing on the large available mass of end-of-life polyolefins, aims at selective oxidation of these hydrocarbon-type materials. As a first option, alcohol (and ketone) groups are created along the polyolefin chain. For this, selective Ti-containing zeolites and clean oxidants (e.g. hydrogen p…