Robert Colebunders

Robert Colebunders, MD, PhD, is an emeritus Professor of tropical diseases of the Institute of tropical medicine and emeritus Prof of infectious diseases at the Global Health Institute, University of Antwerp. He is also a honorary Professor of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Department of Tropical Disease Biology. He worked from 1985 tot 1988 in the Democratic of Congo as coordinator of the clinical studies on HIV/AIDS of “Projet SIDA” in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. April 2004-April 2005 he worked during a sabbatical year at the Infectious Diseases Institute in Kampala, Uganda. He was a member of the international team that investigated the Kikwit Ebola and the Durba Marburg outbreaks in the Democratic republic of Congo and recently reviewed the Ebola patient care activities of Doctors without Borders in West Africa. He was involved in research and capacity building projects concerning the management of HIV and HIV co-infections (mainly tuberculosis) in Uganda, the Central African Region, Ethiopia and South Africa. Since November 2013, he started research on nodding syndrome. In October 2015, he obtained an Advanced ERC grant for a trans-disciplinary research project to identify the cause of nodding syndrome and to identify ways to decrease the incidence of “river epilepsy” (The NSETHIO project). He discovered that nodding syndrome is part of a much larger public health problem, onchocerciasis associated epilepsy, an important complication of onchocerciasis that can be prevented by strengthening onchocerciasis elimination efforts. He is the co-discoverer of the OVRV1 virus in the Onchocerca volvulus worm. He published more than 800 papers in pear reviewed journals, was (co)-author of 40 chapters in books, and was the mentor of 55 PhD students who successfully defended their PhD.