Veerle Baekelandt obtained a master’s degree in romance languages (1987) and a Master (1991) and PhD in biology (1995) at the KU Leuven, Belgium. In 1992, she received a Frank Boas Fulbright scholarship for graduate study at Harvard University and became a research fellow in the laboratory for Neuroscience Research, Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston (1992-1993). In 1999, she joined a new gene therapy project for neurodegenerative diseases in Leuven. In 2003 she was appointed as assistant professor at the faculty of medicine at the KU Leuven and in 2007 as full-time research professor. She is now head of the Laboratory for Neurobiology and Gene Therapy (www.parkinsonresearch.be). Her research focuses on disease modeling and therapy for Parkinson’s disease and related synucleinopathies, with alpha-synuclein and LRRK2 as main interests. Core technologies of the group consist of viral vector technology, stereotactic neurosurgery and molecular imaging in rats and mice.