Research expertise

Kristof works as a veterinarian at the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO), a Flemish government institute.  He graduated in 2000 and after combining his job as an assistant at the Department of Pathology, Bacteriology and Avian Diseases of Ghent University with a job in a veterinary practice his interest in wildlife made him switch to INBO.

There he works on rodent control and invasive species in the context of the conservation, development, management and sustainable use of biodiversity and the environment. Besides that he has a broad interest in wildlife and rodent borne diseases, including zoonoses.

Within the Wildlife Management and Invasive Alien Species team, he specialized in rodent control. Kristof has an (inter)national network of contacts with organizations in the field of rodent research and has extensive experience in providing expertise and support with regard to rodent control in general. He participated in projects concerning rodenticide resistance, secondary poisoning, animal-friendly control methods, bait preference tests and mechanical rodent control.

Several colleagues within INBO rely on his veterinary expertise, in particular his extensive necropsy experience.

In 2008 he founded the laboratory animal lab LA 1400559 at INBO. Through his role as experiment leader, secretary of the Animal Welfare Ethics Committee of INBO and as laboratory manager, he has built up special expertise over the past 20 years on the theme of animal welfare and laboratory animal science in relation to wild animals. Since 2022, Kristof has been a member of the Flemish Laboratory Animal Commission, an advisory board within the Flemish Animal Welfare Department.

For many years he has been a board member of the Belgian Wildlife Disease Association (BWDS), a de facto association that brings together people with an interest in wildlife diseases. He is co-organizer of a biennial international symposium on wildlife diseases.

Kristof is (co)author of numerous scientific A1 publications with a focus on wildlife management and diseases and participated in several international conferences within this field. He wrote or contributed to several INBO publications.