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Welcome to new DANDRITE Team Leader Gilles Vanwalleghem

Assistant Professor at the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics Gilles Vanwalleghem has been appointed as a Team Leader at DANDRITE. His new lab will be working with zebrafish to understand how the enteric nervous system, brain and microbiome interact.

Gilles Vanwalleghem. Photo: AU

Gilles Vanwalleghem’s overarching goal is to understand how dysregulation of the bidirectional communication between the gut microbiome and the nervous system can affect behaviour and lead to mental health disorders.

Currently, the new lab only counts Gilles Vanwalleghem himself, but will expand in the coming months, when Rajlakshmi Sawale who did her Master’s thesis with Vanwalleghem in Brisbane, will join the lab as a PhD Student in March. Furthermore, Vanwalleghem is recruiting a Postdoc with expected start in the spring of 2022. The lab is located in the new MBG buildings in Universitetsbyen.

Vanwalleghem comes from a p Postdoc position at the University of Queensland in Brisbane focusing on sensory processing and autism spectrum disorder. During that time, Gilles Vanwalleghem had two focuses; the first was data analysis of the calcium imaging from the lab, the second was the enteric nervous system.

Vanwalleghem is looking forward to interacting with DANDRITE and exchanging ideas: “I think building a strong neuroscience community in Aarhus will benefit everyone and I hope that we will keep on expanding and reach a critical mass of neuro-oriented people,” says Vanwalleghem.

A warm welcome to Gilles!