Mark Waer

Mark Waer Jozef Albert ( born March 10, 1951 in Leuven ) is a Belgian physician and professor of immunology. On 8 May 2009 he was elected rector of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and entered this office on 1 August 2009.

Life

Waer graduated in 1976 his medical studies at the KULeuven with magna cum laude. He specialized in internal medicine, and in particular nephrology, and received his PhD in 1983 on " Immunological effects of fractionated total lymphoid irradiation on the induction of transplantation tolerance and in the treatment of autoimmune disorders". He then worked as a post- doc at Stanford University until 1985.

From 1985 to 1992 worked Waer in the Department of Nephrology at the KULeuven before being appointed in 1992 as Professor of Immunology. Since 1994 he directs at the KULeuven Laboratory for Experimental Transplantation and was from 1998 to 2005 Medical Director of the University Hospital. He served from 1999 to 2003 the post of adviser to the Belgian Minister of Health and from 2003 to 2005 Chairman of the Commissie Immunology of Belgian Nationaal Fonds voor Geneeskundig onderzoek. Since 2005 he has been Deputy Director of Biomedicine at the KULeuven and since 2006 Chairman of the Board of University Hospitals at the same university.

Since 1 August 2009, Waer is the Rector of the KULeuven. He was elected on 8 May 2009 as the successor to Marc Vervenne when he was in the second round with 682 votes against the legal scholars Koen Geens prevailed that could unite 573 votes.

Waer is a member of the Royal Academy of Medicine and co-editor of the journal Transplantation.

He is married and father of four children.

Awards

For his services to medicine Waer has won several awards. So it was in 1983, both the Fulbright Hays Award for medical research as well as NATO awarded prize for medical research. In 1986 he received the award of the Belgian Immunological Association for the best presentation at the Immunology Congress in Toronto and 1992 the price of the Vereniging voor Kankerbestrijding for his studies on recurrence of leukemia after bone marrow transplantation. In 1995 he was awarded for the best oral presentation at the Congress in Vienna Award of the European Association for organ transplantation. From 2004 to 2005 he held the Francqui Chair at the University of Antwerp for Immunobiology and immunotherapy.

Publications (selection )

Waer is the author or co-author of more than 200 articles in medical journals. For a comprehensive list see the web link below.

  • Immunological effects of fractionated total lymphoid irradiation ( TLI ) on the induction of transplantation tolerance and in the treatment of autoimmune disorders. Diss, Leuven 1986.
  • Xenotransplantation: where are we in 2008?. With B. Spranger and An D. Billiau. In: Kidney international. 74 /2008. International Society of Nephrology, ISSN 0085-2538, pp. 14-21.
  • Xenotransplantation: Role of natural immunity. With Shengqiao Li, and An D. Billiau. In: Transplant immunology. , 2008.
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