28 INTERVIEW L I ESBET GERI S Liesbet Geris (LG) just got her third ERC grant. Michel Georges (MG), GIGA director, met her to discuss her career, her projects and her point of view on the ERC. MG: Congratulations! A 3rd ERC is a major accomplishment! Do you know if you are the only one to have managed it? LG: I’ve done some checking on the website and I know Peter Carmeliet, Conny Aerts and Patrik Verstreken at KU Leuvne have all received 3 ERC as well. They’ve had 3 advanced grants. So there are some people. MG: It is quite an exclusive club! LG: Yes, it feels a bit unreal to see my name in the list. However, the ERC scheme only started in 2007. I’ve submitted my first one in 2010 so I have been submitting ERCs practically from the beginning. Some of my younger colleagues have had a starting grant and have also already obtained a consolidator grant. I’m sure that short list will become much longer when time goes by. MG: In a nutshell, could you tell us what you are working on? LG: The main field of research of the team is in silico medicine or in silico regenerative medicine. Our main applications are centered around bone and cartilage pathologies and tissue engineering, with a strong focus on the development of enabling technologies in general and in silico enabling technologies in particular. The starting grant was about using developmental biology or the way nature designs bone and cartilage as an inspiration to develop in silico models that would then help us increase the efficiency of tissue engineering approaches in the lab. That took a while and, in fact, we are still working on some of the aspects of that concept. The first consolidator grant was more about developing the combination of in vitro - mesofluidics - and in silico tools to have devices that
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