Kurt Houf graduated as veterinarian from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (Ghent University), and received the Waltham Award for his graduation thesis. After a short period in practice, he became an assistant at the department of food hygiene and technology. During that period, he further specialized with a master after master in veterinary public health (1999), and as European specialist in veterinary public health at the European College of Veterinary Public Health (2005). He did several internships at national and international research institutes, and conducted research on the “prevalence and transmission of Campylobacteraceae”, the subject on which he obtained his doctorate in veterinary sciences in 2001. Since 2004, he has been appointed full-time at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine UGent, and since 2016 as visiting professor at the University of Antwerp. In 2019 he became a full member, expert veterinary public health, at the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium. His research is on zoonotic bacteria throughout the food chain, with a focus on emerging en neglected pathogens. Expertise is within the isolation, detection, identification and characterization of foodborne pathogens and pathobionts, and their interactions with microbial communities and environment. In recent years, research tools evolved towards an “omics” approach (mainly gen-, transcript- and proteomics) to study virulence, resistance and persistence mechanisms. His group merged with the lab of microbiology of the Faculty of Science in an interfaculty partnership in order to intensify scientific collaboration. Today, it is a multidisciplinary team of 75 biotechnologists, biologists, biochemists, veterinarians, bioengineers, mathematicians, (bio)computer scientists and technicians led by 7 ZAP members. The laboratory is also the basis of the Belgian bacterial culture collection (BCCM-LMG). Expertise: • bacterial zoonoses • emerging en neglected pathogens • veterinary public health and food safety • food quality • food safety, food microbiology and hygiene