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So, why are you
moving to Belgium?
You
can imagine that I get this question a lot, as everybody
has their favorite place in Europe, and is curious how we would choose Belgium.
The reason is that I
am working for a Belgian company, in
its US
office. At
the time I started, it was
thought that more activity would be established in the US,
but for one
reason or another, this has not happened.
In fact, the opposite has:
we
have added people and locations in Europe and, as it now stands, almost
everyone I am responsible for is in Europe.
So, what is it that I do? I
am responsible for the projects and lab operations
for OncoMethylome
Sciences. We are a
small (~55 people),
young (since 2003) biotech start-up working on diagnostic tests for
cancer. We are
making better ways to see
if you have cancer, if it has re-appeared, how aggressive it might be,
and what
is the best way to treat it. We
do this
by looking for patterns of chemical modification of DNA, which it turns
out may
have an even bigger role in how our bodies work than the better known
mutation
of DNA. You can see
more about the
company and our technology at www.oncomethylome.com.
Alright, why Liège? This
was not the only choice; we have labs in Liège, Leuven
(another city in Belgium)
and Amsterdam,
in the Netherlands. Many people might say they
would rather live
in Amsterdam, but we
are not city people really,
and would rather live in a beautiful village on the edge of the Ardennes than in a big city. Our biggest lab, and the
official
headquarters is in Liège, and so we are going there,
although I will be
spending plenty of time at the other sites as well.
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