Untangling the underlying mechanisms, and developing interventions for prevention and rehabilitation of frailty in the aged

On the one hand, I aim with this Sabbatical Leave application to ‘scientific resourcing’. Since 2012 I have invested a major part of my academic time in policy-making both at the level of the University board and at the level of the Faculty of Medicine & Pharmacy. In addition, my educational assignment at VUB is very demanding and the past 2 years I took the initiative to start a new English Research Master of Gerontological Sciences of 120 ECTS for which I’m program director. Therefore, my ambition for the coming period is to dedicate a major part of my academic time on my research mission which is focused on untangling the underlying mechanisms and to develop interventions for prevention and rehabilitation of frailty in the aged. The Sabbatical Leave would allow me to (re)consolidate my leadership of my research group Frailty in Ageing (https://fria.research.vub.be/), and to focus on 4 major research projects for which I recently secured funding. Further, I aim to strengthen my research portfolio in order to increase my chances for a successful ERC advanced grant application that I anticipate to submit in 2022 or 2023. On the other hand, I also aim to ‘set up a new research collaboration’ with 3 different international partners (prof Vincent MOULY, Sorbonne University, FR; prof Jonathan TURNER, Luxembourg Institute of Health, LU; prof Eric BOULANGER, University of Lille, FR) in order to strengthen my current research program.