




The BeLAS team
The BeLAS project was born out of a collaboration between three research centers dedicated to autism in Flanders and Brussels: ACTE at ULB, RIDDL at UGent and LauRes at KU Leuven.
Supervisors

Mikhail Kissine
Principal investigator
Spokesperson
Mikhail Kissine is a professor of linguistics at ULB and principal investigator of the ACTE research center. His field of research lies at the crossroads of linguistics and cognitive sciences. He is also principal investigator and spokesperson of the BeLAS project.

Ilse Noens
Principal investigator
Ilse Noens is a professor of orthopedagogy at KU Leuven and coordinator of LAuRes. She looks at autism from an educational perspective and seeks leads for diagnostics and support. In the BeLAS study, she mainly focuses on the role of symbol formation and environmental factors.

Herbert Roeyers
Principal investigator
Herbert Roeyers is a professor of clinical psychology at UGent and director of the RIDDL research center. He studies neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism. He mainly investigates developmental trajectories and biomarkers in young children and infants with a higher probablility of developing autism, and the clinical application of this work through screening, diagnosis and early intervention.

Gaétane Deliens
Gaétane Deliens' research focuses on factors that may contribute to communicative difficulties and language delays in autism. She seeks to understand the processes underlying language difficulties, including the impact of sleep cycles, using behavioral and neurophysiological techniques.

Jean Steyaert
Jean Steyaert is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and studies, among others, the development of the clinical picture and neurobiology in children and adolescents with autism. In BeLAS, he has a consultative role in the research on the development of clinical features, as well as in the neurophysiological research.

Petra Warreyn
Petra Warreyn works mainly on early development and intervention in children who have a neurodevelopmental condition or who have a higher probability of developing one. She specializes in observational methods and has a strong interest in the relationship between context and development.
Researchers

Ellen Demurie
Postdoctoral researcher
Ellen Demurie is a postdoctoral researcher at the RIDDL research center. Her current research focuses on the social motivation, reward system and social context of young children with autism or with a higher probability of developing autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders
Scientific collaborators

Pauline Maes
Scientific collaborator
Pauline Maes was a postdoctoral researcher at ACTE and coordinator for the BeLAS project for a year. She is now a postdoctoral researcher at Boston University
Her research focuses on the heterogeneity of language skills on young autistic children, with a particular interest in non- or minimally verbal children.