Daniel Jacobs-Tulleneers-Thevissen is head of department of Surgical Oncology, Thoracic Surgery and Transplantation and coordinator of the Transplant Center at UZ Brussel. He is also a senior lecturer in anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He studied medicine at Hasselt University and VUB. He combined his training as a surgeon with a preclinical research project at the Diabetes Research Center of the VUB, and obtained his PhD in medical sciences in 2013. Afterwards, Daniel Jacobs-Tulleneers-Thevissen further specialized in abdominal transplant surgery and endocrine surgery. He has a particular interest in pancreatic transplantation and clinical cell therapy for diabetes. He is currently working on preclinical models that study the formation of a metabolic adequate beta cell mass of deceased donor and stem cell derived islet cell implants. These studies are conducted at the VUB Diabetes Research Center.