Maarten Dhaenens

I received a Master’s degree in Zoology from Ghent University, Belgium, in 2002. Following an additional masters in Medical Molecular Biotechnology I joined the lab of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology where I became executive principle investigator of the proteomics department when I finished my PhD in 2011. The lab has since focused on the mass spectrometry-based study of histone epigenetic dynamics, the so-called “histone code”, with a special interest in data-independent acquisition MS on QTOF designs since 2013 (both Waters and Sciex technologies). In 2017 I founded ProGenTomics, a proteomics service lab specialized in histone analysis.

I was founding president of the European Young Proteomics Investigators Club (YPIC) in 2016 and became president of the Belgian Proteomics Association (BePA) in 2018. I have a significant track record in method development and I am aiming to further advocate good experimental practices in proteomics as the new managing Editor of EuPA Open Proteomics (Elsevier). I am very much engaged in helping young scientists develop their career as well as in building a tighter international proteomics community.

The recent Sars-Cov-2 outbreak abruptly changed the course of my research to developing an MS-based diagnostic assay that detects Sars-Cov-2 proteins in patients. Once this test is clinically implemented, I aim to go back to my core interest, i.e. unravelling the complexity of the histone code with the most recent MS technologies.