Frans Van de Werf

Frans Van de Werf MD, PhD and fellow of the European Society of Cardiology (FESC), the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (FAHA) is a Belgian cardiologist at the University Hospital Leuven and a professor of medicine at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He was the chair of the university hospital's cardiovascular medicine department until 2011.
His research is focused on acute coronary syndromes, thrombolysis and antithrombotic treatment. His doctoral thesis was an early treatise on the mechanism underlying the gallop rhythm in heart failure. Later, he collaborated in Leuven with Désiré Collen to discover the clinical application of tissue plasminogen activator (tPA).
Professor Van de Werf was Editor-in-Chief of the European Heart Journal until 2008 and is a member of the editorial boards of Circulation, International Journal of Cardiology, Coronary artery disease, Journal of Thrombosis and Thrombolysis.
He was awarded the 2005 Joseph Maisin prize for €100000.
In 2013, the Frans Van de Werf Fund was inaugurated at the KU Leuven. The Fund aims to promote and support clinical cardiovascular research. This includes: financial support of clinical studies conducted at KU Leuven and awarding two scholarships up to 80 000 euro per year to promising KU Leuven researchers or researchers from outside KU Leuven.