GSP6 sets VUB on course for 2034: the mandate holders have their say

What motivated you to take on this role?
“VUB is at an important turning point. We have already achieved a great deal when it comes to sustainability. Now we need to embed it even more firmly in the choices we make. This is about much more than our CO₂ emissions. A university has four powerful levers: what we research, what and how we teach, how we engage with the outside world and how we operate as an organisation. If we connect those four levers much more closely, we can significantly increase our impact on society. That is a challenge I am keen to help take on.”

What lessons do you bring from your previous experience?
“The understanding that sustainability is almost never about a single problem or policy area. Energy, mobility, buildings, food, wellbeing, biodiversity, education and research: they are all interconnected. Through my research and my work with people from very different disciplines and sectors of society, I have learnt to look at that bigger picture, but also to bring people together around a shared ambition. Change works best when you make existing initiatives visible, give people the space to help shape them and connect good ideas and initiatives. That is what I want to do in this role too: show what is already happening, make connections and help VUB move forward as a whole.”

Which challenge do you want to tackle first?
“My first challenge is to put sustainability at the heart of VUB. Not as something extra we do because we have to, but because it is about our future. A tremendous amount is already happening today, but those efforts are often still scattered across research groups, study programmes, services, campuses and individual initiatives. I want to connect that energy much more effectively and help these initiatives spread further and inspire others.

At the same time, I do not want sustainability to become an additional layer on top of the organisation. Particularly at a time of financial pressure, we need to make choices that make sense environmentally, socially and organisationally. Sustainability therefore needs to become an integral part of our everyday decision-making. My aim is that, within four years, we will no longer need to ask where VUB’s sustainability policy is, because it will be visible in the way VUB works.”

What should VUB look like eight years from now?
“Hopefully, by then we will be a university that not only studies sustainability, but puts it into practice and helps shape it. A university where our campuses are living labs for the transition; where students in every programme learn how to tackle the major societal challenges of their generation; where researchers collaborate across disciplines; and where we connect our knowledge much more quickly with Brussels, policymakers, businesses and citizens.
I would like VUB to be internationally recognised as an urban engaged university that demonstrates what a sustainable, inclusive and future-proof university can look like. A university where we dare to experiment, learn and show that change is possible. A university that is not only about knowledge, but also gives our students the skills to help shape that change.”

What motivated you to take on this role?
“In his 2026 Rector Election Policy Plan, the Rector describes Health Valley as a strategic choice for VUB’s future. The initiative aims to bring together the expertise, infrastructure and talent of VUB, UZ Brussel, Erasmushogeschool Brussel (EhB), Research Park Zellik (RPZ), Green Energy Park (GEP) and innovation partners in a single, integrated health ecosystem. I want to help turn that ambition into tangible results.”

What lessons do you bring from your previous experience?
“As a dean, I learnt how important it is to listen carefully, make clear choices, set sharp priorities and bring people on board. I am very enthusiastic about putting that experience to work for Health Valley. I enjoy being the connecting link between people, ideas and partners.”

Which challenge do you want to tackle first?
“Our partners are already doing excellent work in education, research, healthcare and innovation, each drawing on their own expertise and vision. By sharing knowledge, infrastructure and talent, they can strengthen research and healthcare, accelerate innovation and generate greater societal and economic impact. Closer collaboration will also allow them to build a stronger shared profile. By setting common goals and launching a number of concrete projects, we want to demonstrate in the short term what Health Valley means and what it can deliver.”

What should VUB look like eight years from now?
“I will consider my mission a success when Health Valley has become a recognised name within the next few years: a single, integrated health ecosystem with strong local roots and an international profile, generating demonstrable societal and economic impact.”

Which challenge do you want to tackle first?
“First and foremost, I want to help ensure that students feel good, safe and connected at VUB. For me, academic success and student wellbeing are inseparable, and looking out for one another is essential. Our students already take a great deal of responsibility for this themselves. Many are active in student associations, as buddies, tutors or student assistants, through peer support and in initiatives that promote a safe and respectful community, such as codes of conduct and the framework for student initiation activities.

Our associations help shape our university community. They preserve traditions and folklore, while at the same time renewing the way they work and creating opportunities for people to meet, connect and form lifelong friendships. Together with colleagues, I want to support their commitment and capacity for renewal. In this way, we can continue to build a strong sense of community in which students, student associations, study programmes and services share responsibility for creating a warm, engaged and caring university community.”

What should VUB look like eight years from now?
“In eight years’ time, I hope we will have built further on what already makes VUB so strong: a place where students feel at home and can be themselves. A warm and diverse community where we respect one another and each other’s beliefs, where differences can be discussed openly and where we look out for one another. Students do not simply study at VUB; they help make VUB what it is. They do so by getting involved, helping others, taking responsibility and creating new forms of student life. Tradition and renewal, freedom and responsibility, with a sense of belonging as the foundation.”

Which challenge do you want to tackle first?
“My first challenge is to change the way we think about AI. Today, when people think about AI, they tend to think about efficiency: offloading tasks, saving time… That perspective is not wrong, but it is too limited. This technology only becomes truly interesting when it adds something to what we do. In education, for example, AI can provide feedback of a quality and frequency that a teaching team working with 300 students could never achieve on its own. Every student could have a Socratic conversation partner: one that asks questions and helps the student arrive at the answer themselves.

In research, I think of connections across disciplines that would never appear on any individual reading list, and ideas that can be translated from one discipline to another. I can already see that potential in my own research practice, and I want to help spread that approach across the university. The researcher remains the author, but the model expands the space in which research can take place. AI will also help us improve our services and support our core activities in ways we often cannot yet imagine. The litmus test I want us to apply everywhere is simple. If an AI application only saves time, it is mediocre. If it improves the quality of our work, our judgement or our learning, that is when things become truly interesting.”

What should VUB look like eight years from now?
“Haha, 2034! That feels frighteningly far away in AI terms. All right, let’s try. By 2034, every part of VUB will understand the difference between delegation and augmentation, and will systematically choose the latter. If you delegate, you hand over work and allow your own skills to erode. If you augment, you keep yourself sharp in precisely those areas where human judgement really matters. Concretely, students who have spent hundreds of hours experimenting and failing with AI during their studies will think more critically and incisively than we did at their age. And yes, there will certainly still be room for traditional learning without AI. But that will be a deliberate choice, based on a sound pedagogical model.

Researchers, meanwhile, will be able to tackle more ambitious questions because the exploratory groundwork will no longer take months. And staff expertise will be enhanced rather than diminished. There is also a secular humanist principle at the heart of this. A university that uses AI purely as a cost-cutting machine hollows itself out. A university that rejects AI prevents its people from reaching their full potential. VUB chooses a third path. We direct this technology towards what makes a university unique. Judging. Questioning. Understanding. Educating. Learning. Researching. The test for GSP6 will be whether, in 2034, our people think better and support others better than they did in 2026.”

What should VUB look like eight years from now?
“In eight years’ time, VUB should set an example of how a university that excels in education and research can also organise itself in a way that allows us, through and together with the VUB community, to make a meaningful and positive impact on society. We do that by educating highly capable graduates, by pushing the boundaries of science in meaningful ways and by successfully bringing new ideas, concepts and technologies into the world. Entrepreneurship is one of the levers we can use to turn the ambitions of GSP6 into reality.”