Honoring PhD Degree Holders (February 2026)

Jean-Marie Klinkenberg is professor emeritus at the University of Liège, where he held the chair of Semiotics and Rhetoric. With a doctorate in Romance philology, he has devoted his career to language sciences, rhetoric, semiology, and Francophone literature. Author of more than 700 works translated into some 20 languages, his research has developed in two major directions. In linguistics and semiotics, he has distinguished himself within the Groupe μ, with works such as Rhétorique générale (1970), Traité du signe visuel (1992), and Principia semiotica (2015). In the field of Francophone cultures, he renewed the approach to Belgian literature, placing it in a social and institutional perspective. He chaired the oldest Centre d'Études Québécoises d'Europe (Center for Quebec Studies in Europe) for twelve years and founded the Centre d'études de la littérature belge (Center for Belgian Literature Studies). An intellectual engaged in public life, he has served three times as president of the Council for the French Language and Language Policy in Belgium. A visiting professor on several continents and honorary doctor of several universities, he was elected to the Royal Academy of Belgium in 1996 and was made an Officer of the Order of the Legion of Honor in 2025.

Jean-Pierre Latere is a Belgian scientist and entrepreneur of Congolese origin, specializing in biotechnology and cellular immunotherapy. Born in Lubumbashi, he moved to Belgium to study at the University of Liège, where he obtained a PhD in polymer chemistry. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Michigan State University, he began his career at Johnson & Johnson in Belgium and then in the United States, before joining the biotech company Cardio3 Biosciences (now Celyad Oncology) in Mont-Saint-Guibert in 2008, where he led several clinical programs in immuno-oncology and regenerative cardiology. He then moved to Dow Corning, where he headed up the Healthcare Science & Technology and Cosmetics divisions worldwide, before returning to Celyad Oncology, notably as Chief Operating Officer. In 2021, he founded EsoBiotec, a Walloon start-up dedicated to in vivo cell engineering to make cancer therapy more accessible, less expensive, and safer. This innovative approach led to the acquisition of the company by AstraZeneca in 2025, one of the most significant recent Belgian biotechnology successes. Jean-Pierre Latere remains CEO and continues to develop this new generation of cell therapies.

A biomedical engineer and PhD graduate from the University of Liège, Stéphanie van Loo specializes in droplet microfluidics, a technology that allows individual cells to be encapsulated and analyzed in tiny water droplets surrounded by oil. At the Microfluidics Lab at ULiège, she spent nearly ten years developing this innovative approach, culminating in the design of a system capable of sorting living cells at very high speed while preserving their viability. This research led to the creation of ModaFlow™, a compact, automated instrument designed to make microfluidics widely accessible to biologists. This technology has major applications in the discovery of therapeutic antibodies, oncology, immunology, and cell therapy, offering a powerful alternative to traditional methods for studying and manipulating rare, fragile, or high-value-added cells. In April 2022, she founded LiveDrop, a spin-off from her original laboratory. Now CEO and CTO of LiveDrop, she is pursuing her ambition to transform a laboratory innovation into a concrete tool for biomedical research.