University of Antwerp
Belgium

Biography

Peter E. J. Bols was born in Niel, Belgium, in 1964. He graduated as a Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine (magna cum laude) at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, in 1986, and obtained his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree (DVM, cum laude) in 1989 at the University of Ghent, Belgium. After completing his army service, he returned to the University of Ghent as assistant at the Ambulatory Clinic within the Department of Obstetrics, Reproduction and Herd Health. In 1993, he started his Ph.D. research program, and, in 1997, he received his Ph.D. degree (summa cum laude), then, soon thereafter, he joined Prof. Dr. J. Yang as a post-doc at the Animal Science Department, University of Connecticut, Storrs, USA, performing oocyte pick-up in prepuberal heifers studying factors that determine oocyte quality. Following a short period in the pharmaceutical industry (Intervet, NL/F and Janssen Animal Health, Belgium), he worked for the Belgian Government (FAGG, Brussels) and was a Belgian delegate at the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in London, UK. Dr. Bols kept in close contact with the reproduction group at the University of Ghent and lectured during OPU workshops in the USA and Brazil. In 2001, he was appointed as a Professor of Veterinary Physiology at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, got tenured in 2004, promoted to full professor in 2010 and currently still teaches domestic animal physiology, ethnography and veterinary pharmaceuticals.

Prof. Bols performs research on (bovine) assisted reproduction with a particular interest in fertility preservation strategies using bovine/animal models to tackle problems in human reproduction. Being Head of the Veterinary Physiology and Biochemistry Research Unit and the Gamete Research Center, he (co-)authored more than 110 A1-publications, around 200 abstracts in conference proceedings and 4 book chapters on bovine/equine assisted reproduction.

Prof. Bols is a Founding Diplomate of the European College of Animal Reproduction (ECAR) in 2001, and became a member of the ECAR examination committee in 2018. He is currently Department Head of the Department of Veterinary Sciences (UA). He was awarded the Scientific Prize of the Royal Belgian Academy of Medicine - (i.e., KAGB) in 2005, and was recently (2019) elected as Secretary-General of the Royal Belgian Academy of Medicine. Recently, he became a Fellow of the Descartes Centre at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Fields of Interest

• Fertility Preservation
• Pre-antral Ovarian Follicles
• Bovine ART in Vitro Models
• Follicle Vitrification
• Follicle Cellular Communication
• Follicle Culture