Joris Vankerschaver

Joris Vankerschaver is a professor of statistics and director of studies at Ghent University Global Campus (GUGC), where he has been part of the Centre for Biosystems and Biotech Data Analysis since 2021. Prior to joining GUGC, he was a consulting manager at Enthought Limited, a scientific consulting company. In this role, he advised major Japanese life science and pharmaceutical companies on the adoption of digital technologies for the optimization of scientific R&D workflows.

Joris’ research interests center around the use of machine learning and statistical modeling to describe biological, biotechnical, and health-related processes, with a particular emphasis on understanding genomic sequence data, improving predictive modeling for surgical outcomes, and assessing the reliability of industrial bioprocesses.

Joris received a PhD degree in mathematics from Ghent University in Belgium in 2007. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the California Institute of Technology from 2007 to 2009, and received a fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) to pursue research at Waseda University in Tokyo in the autumn of 2009. Prior to joining Enthought, he did postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Diego, and was a Research Associate at Imperial College, London.

Domains of expertise

  • Machine learning
  • Statistical modelling
  • Big data management

Selected publications

  • Francesca Tozzi, Rania Matthys, Adris Molnar, Wim Ceelen, Joris Vankerschaver, Niki Rashidian, Wouter Willaert: Assessment of Intraoperative Scoring Systems for Predicting Cytoreduction Outcome in Peritoneal Metastatic Disease: A Systematic Review. and Meta-analysis. Annals of Surgical Oncology, vol. 31, no. 10, pp. 7165-7183, 2024.
  • Kimberly Gongora, Joris Vankerschaver, Imca Sampers, Sam Van Haute. The influence of pH on the efficacy of oxidation-reduction potential (ORP) to predict chlorine disinfection of surrogate bacteria, Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Listeria monocytogenes in oxidant demand free conditions and fresh produce wash water. Food microbiology,  vol. 121, pp. 104516.
  • Utku Özbulak, Hyun Jung Lee, Jasper Zuallaert, Wesley De Neve, Stephen Depuydt, Joris Vankerschaver: Mutate and observe: utilizing deep neural networks to investigate the impact of mutations on translation initiation. Bioinformatics, vol. 39, no. 6,  2023.

Work details