Research expertise

Prof Liselotte Hardy is the head of the Unit of Tropical Bacteriology at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium. Liselotte is a biomedical scientist specialized in bacterial diagnostics. After a few years working in clinical studies for the pharmaceutical industry, she moved to ITM’s department of public health coordinating projects on vaginal health in sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. Inspired by this, she did her PhD-research at ITM’s Reference Laboratory for Sexually Transmitted Infections led by Tania Crucitti, on characterising the bacterial biofilm in bacterial vaginosis. After her PhD, Liselotte worked at the Photonics Research Group of Ghent University for a few years. Here she co-developed a lab-on-chip platform to diagnose infectious diseases, leading to the spin-off company Antelope Dx. Just before Antelope Dx’s incorporation, Liselotte moved back to ITM to the Unit of Tropical Bacteriology of Jan Jacobs. In the past decade, she has set up its research line on “development and implementation of adapted diagnostics for low-resource settings”. From September 2024 on, she succeeded Jan as head of unit and professor Tropical Bacteriology. Her research focus is on field-approriate bacterial diagnostics and local production of culture media building on the unit’s longstanding work on AMR surveillance.

Teaching expertise

Supervision of master theses:

• 2022-2023: Jens Cornelis, Msc in Electrical Engineering Ghent University - Development of an optical/electronic system for rapid detection of bacterial infection
• 2021-2022: Charlien Hupco, Msc in Medical Sciences  KU Leuven - Optimisation of a simplified blood culture system to improve healthcare in low-resource settings

Services expertise