Institutes, resources and contacts

The largest research hub in Brussels, ULB is also a key player in research about the city itself.
ULB's network of studies on Brussels, EB^xl, includes researchers in archaeology, architecture, law, economics, history, political science, sociology, public health, etc., who come together to decode the country's capital.

Biologists, chemists, physicians, etc. must deal with volumes of data that are increasingly difficult to store, while computer scientists and statisticians can help them model, understand, and digest all this information.

The Interuniversity Institute of Bioinformatics in Brussels (IB²), created by ULB and VUB, brings all these people together.

Europe has significant potential as a topic of study, especially in Brussels where experts, high-ranking officials, and EU decision-makers are gathered.

The Institute for European Studies (IEE) focuses its research on four areas: EU law, political science, economics, and history.

The interfaculty Institute for Socio-Ecological Transformations, iiTSE brings together research activities for the understanding and significance of the radical societal changes made necessary to meet the imperatives of strong sustainability.

New models for innovative collaboration are emerging in the field of healthcare.

These are at the heart of research projects and education programmes at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Innovation in Healthcare (I³h).

In line with the questions and debates that animate today's civil society, the Institute for Human Sciences (MSH) hosts five centres:

AmericaS (interdisciplinary centre for American studies), LIEU (interdisciplinary laboratory for urban studies), OMAM (observatory of the Arab and Islamic worlds), STRIGES (interdisciplinary research structure on gender, equality, and sexuality), and EASt (East Asian Studies).

Globalization, digital revolution, climate change, demographic changes, etc.: our world is undergoing a number of transformations that affect the social compromise.

Based on this observation, the Research Centre for Social Change —TRANSFO— looks into three specific areas: labour, employment and social transformations; urban mutations and territorial dynamics; democratic changes and participatory governance.

Vaccination has been a significant driver of progress in healthcare. Today, immunology is opening up untold perspectives in the fight against a variety of pathologies: cardiovascular, neurodegenerative, and autoimmune diseases, as well as allergies, allografts, or even cancer.

Biologists, chemists, engineers, and physicians at ULB's research institute on immunology, U-CRI study all these diseases using both a fundamental and a clinical approach.

Cancer is a complex disease that must be tackled using a variety of skills: cellular and molecular biology, genomics, epigenetics, proteonomics, immunology, and even bioinformatical analysis of cancer.

These are all gathered at the ULB Cancer Research Centre (U-CRC), in which researchers from ULB, Hôpital Erasme, and the Bordet Institute work together.

U-IRIS, ULB Interdisciplinary Research Institute for Sports brings together the research skills available at ULB in the fields of sports and physical activity, in order to foster collaboration and interdisciplinary research.

Research at U-IRIS is centred around five main areas: clinical research - sports medicine; high-level sport - performance; rehabilitation - disability and sport; sport and society (including education through sport); prevention - public health - nutrition.

Understanding the development and operation of the brain is among the most fascinating and difficult challenges of science today. Researchers must identify mechanisms that exist at very different scales: from genes to consciousness and from neural pathways to human behaviour.

The ULB Neuroscience Institute (UNI) takes advantage of tight synergies to study all dimensions of the brain's complexity.