Dr. Sandra Verstraelen is a project manager at the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO) and holds a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from Ghent University. Since 2018, she has led VITO’s in vitro inhalation testing platform, which supports advanced exposure studies of vapors, gases, aerosols (liquid and powders), and powders. The platform integrates air-liquid interface (ALI)-cultured lung models with exposure generation, characterization, and biological assays to evaluate the safety and efficacy of nanomaterials, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and consumer products.
As a biomedical expert, Dr. Verstraelen works in a multidisciplinary team of aerosol experts, chemists, engineers, biomedical scientists and data scientists. She has supervised multiple students and researchers and is co-inventor of a patent on the NAVETTA exposure system. With over 35 peer-reviewed publications, she actively contributes to the scientific community and is a member of Belgian and European Respiratory Society (BeRS/ERS), the International Society for Aerosols in Medicine (ISAM), and the Controlled Release Society BeNeLux & France local chapter (BNLF CRS). She has participated in numerous national and European research projects (FP7, H2020, Horizon Europe) focused on in vitro (inhalation) testing, nanosafety, safe-and-sustainable-by-design approaches, and indoor air quality.
