TEAM MEMBERS

Prof. dr. ir. Liesbet M. Peeters is an Associate Professor at Hasselt University’s Data Science Institute and Biomedical Research Institute. Her work bridges health data science, ethics, and systems change, with a focus on improving real-world decision-making in multiple sclerosis. Across her interdisciplinary career, she has followed one guiding purpose: using data, insight, and human values to strengthen health and care systems.

She also hosts The World of Liesbet, a podcast exploring purpose, courage, and what it means to become an agent of change.

Lotte Geys has a background in biomedical sciences. She defended her PhD in 2017 at the University of Leuven and started working as clinical data manager afterwards. Since December 2019, she is working for the research group of Biomedical Data Sciences under supervision of Prof. Liesbet Peeters where she is currently employed as postdoctoral researcher.

Lotte has a bridgebuilding role between the worlds of biomedical sciences and data sciences and has expertise in governance and contract management when it comes to reuse of real-world health data for research.

Dr. ir. Ilse Vermeulen is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Hasselt University and the National Node Manager of OHDSI Belgium, with strong links to OHDSI Europe and Global. Originally trained as a bio-engineer (PhD, VUB, 2012), she developed her expertise in real-world health data, interoperability, and multi-stakeholder collaboration under the mentorship of Prof. Liesbet Peeters. Known as a Swiss-knife researcher, Ilse thrives at the intersection of technical detail, strategic insight, and collaborative action, helping to translate complex data into meaningful, real-world impact.

dr. Ashkan Pirmani is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Hasselt University and KU Leuven, holding a double PhD—one at STADIUS/ESAT, KU Leuven under Prof. Yves Moreau, and one at the Biomedical Data Sciences group, Hasselt University under Prof. Liesbet Peeters. He develops federated learning frameworks for multiple sclerosis and other real-world datasets, enabling collaboration without centralizing sensitive data.

Known for combining technical innovation with practical problem-solving, Ashkan bridges machine learning, privacy-preserving data infrastructure, and collaborative health-data research to turn complex data into meaningful insights.

Tina Parciak has a background in Medical Informatics and has been part of the MS Data Alliance since its very beginning, bringing the topic of harmonisation of real-world data in MS forward.

Within her current PhD studies within the research group of biomedical data sciences at the Biomedical Research Institute and Data Science Institute at UHasselt, she is developing and orchestrating new technologies and strategies for harmonisation for real-world MS data sources. One of her research interests lies in the adaptability of the OMOP common data model (OHDSI) for real-world data coming from registries. She is the lead of the OHDSI Registry workgroup.

Sofie is a Master's graduate in Clinical Biomedical Sciences from Hasselt University. During her Master's education, she gained experience managing real-world data (RWD) at the University MS Centre Hasselt-Pelt and acquired insights into the current challenges related to it.

Marcel finished his applied computer science studies in 2017, earning a master's degree. Afterwards, he worked as a research associate at the medical data integration center of the university medical center Göttingen. During this time, he developed IT-infrastructures and worked as a health data engineer.

Hamza Khan completed his Bachelor's in Dental Surgery before pursuing a Master's degree in Public Health (MPH) in 2019. During his internship at the International Organization for Migration (IOM - Regional Office for EU/EEA and NATO, Brussels), he gained insight into the importance of data and robust statistical methods/machine learning in healthcare research.

Dr. Axel Faes is an AI researcher specialising in federated learning, multi-modal healthcare AI, and precision medicine. After completing his PhD in Biomedical Sciences at KU Leuven, he joined the Biomedical Data Sciences group (2024–2025), where he advanced privacy-preserving cardiovascular risk prediction and population health analytics.

In 2026, Axel continues his career as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Twente (CODE), developing multi-modal and explainable AI for early cancer detection and pioneering transformer-based foundation models for precision oncology.

Noëlla Pierlet is the Head of the Data Science team at ‘Ziekenhuis Oost-Limburg’ in Genk. She has over 25 years of experience in medical IT: she started as a system administrator, changed to software developer, project lead, and finally a data scientist. One of her specialties is bridging the gap between physicians and engineers. She is a pro at translating complex medical jargon into language that technical people can understand and vice versa.

Noëlla firmly believes that qualitative, structured data is the foundation for improving patient care. Her passion for using data to drive change and enhance healthcare has led her to pursue a PhD within the biomedical data sciences research group where she researches how to improve data quality in real world data.