Joleen Masschelein is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biology at KU Leuven and a Group Leader at VIB, the leading Life Science Research Institute in Belgium. She is also a visiting Professor at the Tianjin Institute for Industrial Biotechnology in China. Her research is driven by a passion for discovering and developing new drugs and treatments, leveraging the extraordinary biosynthetic capabilities of bacteria. Joleen has a degree and a PhD in Bioscience Engineering, and has held postdoctoral  fellowships at the University of Warwick in the UK and the KU Leuven Rega Institute, supported by the European Commission and the Research Foundation Flanders. In 2023, she was awarded a prestigious 1.5 million EUR Starting Grant from the European Research Council to harness the power of beneficial gut microbes for the development of innovative cancer therapies that are more effective and safe. In just over three years, she has assembled a multidisciplinary team of 30 scientists from diverse backgrounds, including chemistry, microbiology, engineering and bioinformatics.