Kiavash Movahedi

Kiavash Movahedi is an associate professor at the VUB, where he heads the Brain and Systems Immunology lab associated with the Brussels Center for Immunology. The Movahedi lab focuses on brain immunology and aims to understand how neuro-immune crosstalk shapes the healthy and diseased brain. The lab works on developing immune-centric therapies for neurodegenerative disorders and cancer and has a particular interested in brain macrophages and microglia. In this regard, Prof. Movahedi was recently awarded an ERC consolidator grant focused on microglia engineering and replacement strategies as a new treatment paradigm for brain disease. Prof. Movahedi graduated as a bioengineer and obtained his PhD in bioscience engineering at the VUB in 2010, supported by an aspirant fellowship from FWO. As an Alexander von Humboldt fellow, he then undertook postdoctoral training at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Germany. In 2015, he returned to Belgium and started his independent research unit at the VUB. In 2020, he became a tenure-track assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 2023.