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    Francqui Start-Up Grant

    2 June 2026: — As recent Francqui Foundation laureates, Simon and ELIV- colleague Hans Van Dyck were invited by Count Herman Van Rompuy to attend the 2026 Francqui-Collen Prize award ceremony in Brussels. This year's Francqui-Collen Prize—often referred to as the "Belgian Nobel Prize"—was awarded to Diether Lambrechts (KU Leuven) and Patrice Cani (UCLouvain) in recognition of their outstanding scientific contributions (in the biomedical field). Both Hans and Simon benefited from Francqui Foundation support this year: Hans was awarded a Francqui Chair, while Simon received a Francqui Starting Grant. The ceremony and subsequent reception were attended by His Majesty the King — a rare occasion where field clothes and lab coats were exchanged for suits and bow ties.
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    10 September 2025: — The Francqui Foundation has been generous in granting me a Start-Up Grant to help lift my research program off the ground. With only about four such grants awarded each year, and just one per university, I feel very lucky to have sneaked onto the list!
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    Starting a research group at UCLouvain!

    Excited to announce that I’ll be joining the Earth and Life Institute at Université catholique de Louvain as an Assistant Professor of Animal Evolutionary Ecology this September (2025). Watch this space for upcoming opportunities for PhDs and postdocs!
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    CSiV XVI 

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    This July, the 2024 Chemical Signals in Vertebrates Conference will be hosted by Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. I am thrilled to participate as a keynote speaker alongside the incredible Robert Beynon and Leanne Grieves. It is not too late to register — join us for an exciting event!
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    First international symposium on
    Rapid Evolution in the Anthropocene
    25 May  2023 — Antwerp, Belgium

    We are changing the world. We are destroying, polluting and fragmenting habitats, altering climatic conditions, plundering and relocating populations. So far-reaching is the impact of our activities, that the earth is said to have entered a new epoch: the Anthropocene. Many natural species will probably not survive the Anthropocene. Many have vanished already.
    But others have shown unexpected resilience. They have adjusted their behaviour, adapted their physiology, amended their morphology, altered their life history to fit in this modern, man-made world. Some of them do well, some even thrive in the new settings. 
           In this symposium, we brought together biologists that have documented how natural species of various kinds have responded to our ubiquitous and intrusive presence. Which species will make it through the sixth extinction wave, why, and how will they do it?
       The program line-up consisted of seven esteemed and internationally renowned evolutionary ecologists: Oriol Lapiedra (CREAF, Spain), Kristien Brans (VUB, Belgium), Cara Love (Princeton University, USA), Mats Olsson (University of Gothenburg, Sweden), Jacintha Ellers (VUAmsterdam, The Netherlands), Hans Van Dyck (UCLouvain, Belgium), and Rick Shine (Macquarie University, Australia). Over 100 people registered for the event — the majority were MSc and PhD students. The organisation of the symposium was only made possible by funding from the FWO, Society for the Study for Evolution, The Company of Biologists, and the Francqui Foundation.  — Poster artwork by Arno Heeren
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    Interview in National Geographic Magazine
    1 March 2023 — Ghent, Belgium
    In 2018, I received an "Early Career Grant" from the National Geographic Society to study dietary specialisation and adaptive divergence of head shape in island lizards. I expand on the findings of the research project in an interview in National Geographic Magazine (March 2023). 
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    When animals on land want to dive
    7 December 2021 — Belgium
    Guess what? Our research on the repeated evolution of non-wettable skin in semi-aquatic lizards caught the eye of Dirk Draulans, biologist and scientific editor at the Belgian magazine Knack (see below, in Dutch) You can find our original study in The Journal of Experimental Biology.
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    Award of the Research Board 2021: Applied and Exact Sciences
    6 December 2021 — Antwerp, Belgium

    ​The Research Council Prizes of the University of Antwerp are awarded every two years at the expense of the Special Research Fund University of Antwerp. They aim to honor a successful young postdoctoral researcher for a special contribution to his/her scientific field.

    ​I feel privileged to be a laureate in the exact and applied sciences (Prize Frans Verbeure).

    Make sure to read the laudation by prof. dr. Raoul Van Damme.
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    Archaic lingo and the endeavour for total inclusivity in science

    9 April 2020 — Sydney, Australia. 

    As scientists increasingly communicate with the general public, we need to re-evaluate our use of terms. Some words that are non-controversial to professional scientists can be deeply offensive to members of the wider community. Behavioural ecologists, in particular, face a minefield. Many terms that have been in common use for decades can cause distress if extrapolated to human behaviour – and as a result, cause distress to members of groups such as the LGBTQIA community.
     
    As an example, male snakes that produce female-like pheromones (and thus attract courtship from rival males) have been termed “she-males” (R. Shine et al Nature 414, 267; 2001), a term that can be offensive to transgender people and cross-dressers. Clearly, the scientists using that term had no desire to give offense – but languages and communities evolve, and words may change their emotional context as times change, or when phrases developed in one context are applied in another. The explosive growth of citizen science and science blogs ensures that words like “she-male” will increasingly reach the attention of people who are hurt by the unintended consequences of that terminology. Similarly, scientists continue to use the term “dwarf male" long after society in general has abandoned the word “dwarf”; and terms like “sneaky mating strategy” can be misinterpreted to imply endorsement of conventional sex roles.
     
    The solution is simple. We need to be more careful in choosing descriptors for the attributes of non-human organisms, to avoid the danger of alienating and offending people for whom such terms have severe negative connotations. Some will argue that this is political correctness gone too far; but if we are truly committed to inclusivity in science, we need to avoid terminology that some groups within society find deeply pejorative.

    Rick Shine, Simone Blomberg, and I wrote a (very) small opinion piece about this in Nature.

    Although I am mildly uncomfortable with the idea that this may come across as virtue signalling, I think that this one of those issues where you need to stand up and be counted. Opinions are nowhere near unanimous about terminology issues. 
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