Pierre Vanderhaeghen is professor of neurosciences and group leader at the VIB KULeuven Center for Brain and Disease Research. He and his team study the mechanisms of development of the cerebral cortex and how these are linked to human brain evolution and diseases. They pioneered in-vitro and in-vivo models of corticogenesis from pluripotent stem cells, through which they discovered the key influence of cell-intrinsic properties of neural stem cells and neurons on human brain evolution.
Vanderhaeghen graduated with an M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Brussels. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School and then as a faculty member at the University of Brussels before joining VIB KULeuven in 2018.
