Stein Aerts has a multidisciplinary background in both bioengineering and computer science. During his PhD, he was trained in bioinformatics, and as a postdoctoral fellow he worked on the genomics of gene regulation in fruit flies. Dr. Aerts heads the Laboratory of Computational Biology, which focuses on deciphering the genomic regulatory code using a combination of single-cell, machine-learning and experimental approaches. Recent scientific contributions include new bioinformatics methods for the analysis of single-cell gene regulatory networks (SCENIC+, SCENIC, cisTopic), new experimental assays for single-cell and spatial omis (HyDrop, Nova-ST), deep-learning enhancer models (e.g., DeepMEL, DeepFlyBrain, DeepLiver) and methods for AI-driven design of synthetic enhancers. Dr. Aerts co-founded the Fly Cell Atlas consortium. He obtained an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2016 and an ERC Advanced Grant in 2022. In 2023, Dr. Aerts founded VIB.AI, the VIB Center for AI and Computational Biology, where he is currently the scientific director.