Niel Hens

Niel Hens (MMath, MSc, PhD) is full Professor at Hasselt University and at the University of Antwerp where he holds the chair in evidence-based vaccinology. He is a biostatistician and mathematical epidemiologist with 15 years experience in human mathematical epidemiology. He is holder of the prestigious Consolidator Grant TransMID (2016-2021) from the European Research Council (ERC), to consolidate his innovative and interdisciplinary line of research on modelling infectious diseases through long-term funding. He currently coordinates the H2020 EpiPose project aimed at studying the covid-19 pandemic. He has first-authored 1 successful monograph, co-edited a recently published handbook and has over 250 publications in both statistical and epidemiological peer-reviewed A1 journals. His h-index is 49 (Google Scholar). He supervised 19 PhD students, some of whom have taken up academic positions at different institutes worldwide. He has a large research network with many ongoing collaborations (e.g. Jamie-Lloyd Smith @UCLA; John Edmunds @LSHTM). He has been associate editor for Biostatistics and Biometrics, reviewing editor for eLife and reviewer for many journals including statistical, epidemiological and biology journals including Nature, Science and the Lancet Infectious Diseases (statistics reviewer). Niel Hens has been active in dissemination activities and science communication. This includes over 80 invited presentations and seminars; science communication activities via the Universiteit Van Vlaanderen, EOS, Campus Cup, etc. But also under the umbrella of the Jonge Academie (www.jongeacademie.be), a prestigious interdisciplinary group of top scientists and artists in Belgium of which he was member (2014-2019) and co-president (2017-2019). Niel Hens is the current head of the Center for Statistics at Hasselt University and vice-director of I-BioStat, Hasselt University & KU Leuven, and of the recently established Data Science Institute at Hasselt University and together with Philippe Beutels he leads the interuniversity research group SIMID at Hasselt University & University of Antwerp. He has been consulted by ECDC and WHO, a.o. about the Ebola epidemic in West-Africa (2013-2016) and DRC (2019) and is currently advising the Belgian government on managing the COVID-19 pandemic.