Alex van Belkum

Alex van Belkum, PhD PhD, fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, has been primarily involved in basic research on molecular epidemiology, molecular and culture-based diagnostics and antimicrobial resistance testing in the domain of human clinical microbiology and infectious diseases. He was a VP Microbiology research at bioMérieux, a privately-owned diagnostics company based in the South of France. He is the author of over 600 PubMed-listed papers that have been collectively cited over 60.000 times, resulting in an H index of over a 100. He has worked at the Universities of Leiden and Rotterdam, both in The Netherlands, and at the latter institute he still holds an emeritus professorship in molecular microbiology. He moved to industry 15 years ago and was involved in the development of novel diagnostics technologies including culture-based ones and several based on mass spectrometry. He has a prime interest in next generation sequencing and the use of other data-rich technologies in clinical microbiology. He published five books and is one of the editors of “Molecular Microbiology: diagnostic principles and practice” published by ASM Press, American Society of Microbiology, Washington. Van Belkum currently works at ShanX Medtech, a start-up developing point of care, direct from specimen antibiotic susceptibility testing systems.