Contact

Prof. Dr. Stefaan C. De Smedt
Pro-dean of the faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Director of Ghent Research Group on Nanomedicines
Director of Laboratory of General Biochemistry and Physical Pharmacy
Deputy Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Controlled Release

Ghent University
Ottergemsesteenweg 460
9000 Gent
Belgium
Tel: 0032 9 2648047 (secretary)
Tel: 0032 9 264 8076 (direct)
E-mail: Stefaan.DeSmedt@UGent.be

Biography

Stefaan C. De Smedt  (°1967) studied pharmacy and graduated from Ghent University (Belgium). In 1995 he joined the pharmaceutical development group of Janssen Research Foundation and became Professor in Physical Pharmacy and Biopharmacy at Ghent University (1999) where he initiated his research on advanced delivery of biologics/nanomedicines and founded the Ghent Research Group on Nanomedicines. He served as dean of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Ghent University from 2010 till 2014. He is a member of the Board of Directors of respectively Ghent University (since 2014) and the University Hospital of UGent (since 2019). He has been a Guest Professor at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium),  the University of Antwerp (Belgium) and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China). He is a Distinguished Visiting Scientist of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2017), Specially Appointed Professor of Nanjing Foresty University (2016-2019) and Adjunct Professor at the University of Science and Technology of China (Hefei, since 2020). Since 2004 he serves as the European Associate Editor of the Journal of Controlled Release (JCR); in 2015 he became Editor of JCR for the regions Europe- the Middle East & Africa. Since 2020 he is Deputy Editor-in-Chief of JCR.

Research of Prof. de Smedt is at the interface between drug delivery, biophysics, material sciences and physical chemistry. He is the author or co-author of about 350 manuscripts (h-factor: 68; > 17500 citations) including contributions to Nature Materials, Nature Communications, Nature biotechnology, Nature Drug Discovery Reviews, Nano Letters, … In 2018 he became awarded Highly Cited Researcher (interdisciplinary sciences) by Web of Science (Thomson Reuters).  He has been the scientific (co-)promoter and mentor of 48 defended doctoral theses; 8 of his doctoral/post-doctoral fellows are assistant/associate/full professors at various faculties; three of them received most prestigious Starting / Consolidator Grants from the European Research Council (ERC).

Dr. S.C. De Smedt received the Scott Blair Biorheology Award for his Ph.D work; For his research on drug delivery he received the Controlled Release Society Young Investigator Award 2006 (Vienna) and the APV Research Award 2010 for Outstanding Research Achievements in Pharmaceutical Sciences (Malta). In 2015 he was awarded as member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine. In 2016 he and his co-worker Dr. Koen Raemdonck received the T. Nagai Research Achievement Award (Seattle). In 2017 he was awarded as Distinguished Scientist of the Chinese Academy of Sciences  (Hefei).

Dr. De Smedt filed 20 patents on carriers (and adjuvants) for drug delivery, and materials (and methods) for diagnostics.  He is a scientific founder of Memobead Technologies, a spin-off from Ghent University, whose technology was further developed by Biocartis in Lausanne (Swiss) and Mechelen (Belgium). Currently MyCartis (Ghent) commercializes the technology. Dr. De Smedt is a member of the Drug Delivery Advisory Panel of Santen (Japan) specialized in ophthalmological medicines.

Dr. De Smedt is as member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine (elected 2015), the European Academy of Sciences (section medicine & life sciences; elected 2018) and the Académie Nationale de Pharmacie of France (elected 2019).