Joost Schymkowitz

Frederic Rousseau and Joost Schymkowitz are a scientific duo since 1998. They both obtained their Ph.D. in 2001 from the University of Cambridge (UK) where they used protein engineering methods to study mechanisms of protein folding. They then moved to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg (Germany) where they contributed to the development of several structural bioinformatics tools to predict the mutational effects on protein stability and aggregation (FoldX and TANGO).

They are currently group leaders at the KU Leuven-VIB Centre for Brain & Disease Research where they conduct research on mechanisms of protein misfolding and aggregation in disease. They developed several technology platforms manipulating protein aggregation either to inhibit protein aggregation or to design synthetic amyloid peptides with biological activity.