Prof. Dr. Greet Schoeters

SCIENTIFIC DIRECTOR

Prof. Dr. GREET SCHOETERS studied animal biology at the University of Antwerp and obtained her PhD at the university of Antwerp in the field of radiation biology in 1983. She did a postdoctoral training at the University of California Davis (1983-1984) on haemopietic and bone forming cellular differentiation assays in vitro. As project leader at the Study centre for Nuclear Energy in Belgium (Mol) she was responsible for several EU projects related to radiation protection, development of in vitro alternative toxicological tests (in collaboration with the European Centre for Validation of Alternative Methods ECVAM), and for a project on bone cell differentiation under microgravity conditions for the European Space Agency (participation to spatial flight with a Russian BIOKOSMOS satellite). In 1993 she became head of the Environmental Toxicology Unit of VITO (The Flemish Institute for technological research). She manages research activities of a group of 40 scientists and technicians in the fields of ecotoxicology, alternative testing and environmental health and participates in different European networks and projects. Research projects address human risk assessment as well as development, validation and use of biomarkers and bioassays with focus on hormone disruption, genotoxicity and immunotoxicity. She is responsible for a large scale biomonitoring programme in humans on environmental health which is conducted on behalf of the Flemish ministries of Environment and Health. She is (was) member of advisory committees for Flemish, Belgian and European authorities (e.g. Health effects of incinerators, Belgian Dioxin crisis committee, the Belgian Health Council , the Health council of the Netherlands, the European COST technical committee on environment, the expert panel on contaminants in the food chain from the European Food Safety Agency, the European biomonitoring working group related to the SCALE initiative). She is member of the executive board of ESTIV, the European Society for toxicology in vitro. She is author of more than 100 peer reviewed papers. In 2003 she was appointed associate professor at the department of biomedical sciences of the University of Antwerp. She is a founding member of CARDAM.