Laurens Ceulemans

Laurens Ceulemans (°1985, Leuven, Belgium) graduated as medical doctor in 2010 at KU Leuven, Belgium (MD). In 2017, he obtained his PhD with his contributions to the field of intestinal transplantation and ischemia reperfusion injury. After his specialization in general surgery (2018), he completed a clinical and research fellowship in thoracic surgery and transplantation at the University Hospitals and ETH Zürich in Switzerland. This fellowship was supported by several grants including the prestigious Horlait-Dapsens and ESOT scholarships.
Since 2019 he works as a thoracic and transplant surgeon at the department of Thoracic Surgery and the Leuven Intestinal Failure and Transplant (LIFT) center at the University Hospitals Leuven, Belgium. His clinical responsibilities are lung transplantation (80/year), lung volume reduction surgery (60-70/year), mesothelioma, mediastinal surgery, intestinal and multivisceral transplantation.
Since 2019 he is appointed as head of the lab of thoracic surgery and lung transplantation. He is appointed as assistant professor in Surgery at KU Leuven and his basic research focuses on both the lung and the intestine. He is (co-)promotor of 15 PhD students, studying various animal models: mice lung transplantation, rat lung transplantation and ex-vivo lung perfusion, rabbit non-vascularized rectus fascia transplant, rat intestinal ischemia reperfusion injury and intestinal transplant.
From October 2023 he is appointed as senior clinical researcher funded by the national research fund (FWO) and since 2024 as Surgical Director of the Leuven Lung Transplant program.
He is the author of 180 peer-reviewed papers and actively enrolled in several transplant societies, including elected member of the European Surgical Association (ESA). In September 2023 he was awarded the Jon Van Rood Eurotransplant award. He is the chair of the membership and education committee of the Intestinal Rehabilitation and Transplant Association and the chair of the lung transplant committee of the European Society of Thoracic Surgery.