Niko Speybroeck
Program Director
Professor of Quantitative Epidemiology (research interests in the areas of epidemiology, biostatistics, spatio-temporal analysis, mathematical models, surveillance systems, epidemics)
Regina Below
Database Manager, Documentalist
Regina is a Database Manager and Documentalist at CRED, where she has been working for over 30 years. As technical support staff, she is involved in different activities at the centre and is in charge of the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT).
Emilie Castin
Research Assistant, Geographer
After a Master in Geography from UCLouvain, Emilie worked three years as a SIG consultant before she joined the CRED Team to work on the EM-DAT database and its future development as well as projects linked with the database. Emilie loves to study the relationship between mankind and its environment, the challenges society is facing and looking for sustainable solutions.
Periklis Charalampous
Postdoctoral researcher
Periklis Charalampous holds PhD in Public Health Epidemiology from Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His key research interests include summary measures of population health, epidemiological methods, and systematic reviews. In 2024, Periklis joined the CRED team to work on burden of disease assessments.
Damien Delforge
Postdoctoral researcher
Damien Delforge began his research career in 2013 at the Earth and Life Institute (ELI, UCLouvain), where he worked on hydrology and flood risk management. He completed a Ph.D. from 2017 to 2020 at UCLouvain and the Seismology and Gravimetry department of the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB), specializing in machine learning tools and causal analysis of data. In 2021, Damien joined the CRED team to work on developing the EM-DAT database.
Gurvan Pluen
Research Assistant, Geographer
Gurvan holds a Master's degree in Geomatics from Rennes 2 University. After an internship in humanitarian geomatics, he joined CRED to continue his involvement in the aid sector, but now in research. He is in charge of developing geocoding and visualization tools for the EM-DAT database.
Margo Tonnelier
PhD Student
Margo Tonnelier holds a Master's degree in Public Health from UCLouvain. She is in charge of epidemic-related activities of EM-DAT project and she studies the Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) following disasters.
Joris van Loenhout
Senior researcher
Joris has obtained his PhD in infectious disease epidemiology from Radboud University, the Netherlands. He has been involved with the work at CRED since 2014. His main areas of interest include the impact of heatwaves on health, the impact of epidemics, and risk perception and preparedness. Joris is also working at the service Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases at Sciensano, the national institute of public health in Belgium.
Valentin Wathelet
Database Development, Main Attaché
Valentin holds a Master's degree in Biomedical Sciences (Clinical Biomedical Sciences Specialization) from the Université catholique de Louvain. Interested in software and database development, his work focuses on the EM-DAT database and its usability. He started the development of the new EM-DAT public portal, working now part time on the project.