“I’m very happy and honoured to share that earlier this week I received the Water Technology Award 🏆 for my MSc thesis during the Academia Meets Industry (AMI) event, organised by watercircle.be , B-IWA (Belgian-International Water Association) and Cluster H2O at VIVAQUA. 

This event highlights people who make an impact in the water sector, so I’m grateful to the jury (Willy Gils, Marc Feyaerts and Rob Van den Broeck) for this recognition and for giving me the opportunity to present my work to academic and industrial partners in this exciting sector 💦. 

In my thesis “A clean getaway: identifying microbes escaping stressed biofilms in anaerobic digestion”, I used flow cytometry to detect early stress signals in biofilms 👩🏻‍🔬. You could say I tried to prevent “microbial burn-outs” before the system collapses. A special thank you to Jo De Vrieze, Nico Boon and Josefien Van Landuyt for their guidance, expertise and support throughout this research 🔬.

While this award is a wonderful milestone to close off my studies 📚, I’m also excited to share what comes next. After graduating in June as a Master of Science in Bioscience Engineering (Cell and Gene Biotechnology) 👩🏻‍🎓, I decided to continue my academic journey at the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering UGent. In September, I started my PhD under the supervision of Peter Goethals and Nico Boon, focusing on in situ treatment technologies to prevent toxic cyanobacterial blooms in surface waters as part of the European Urban Initiative Blue4Green project 💙💚.

The first months of this new adventure have already been very rewarding, and occasionally a bit challenging 🤪. Let this exciting chapter unfold ✨”