Prof. Dr. Karen Sermon

After her medical degree at the VUB, Karen Sermon started her scientific career first as a master, then as a PhD student with Inge Liebaers and André Van Steirteghem. The topic of her PhD was the development of a preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) for Tay-Sachs disease. In the years following her PhD degree, she was instrumental in developing PGD for monogenic diseases at the Centres for Medical Genetics and Reproductive Medicine, leading to nearly 60 highly cited papers on the subject. The PGD clinic today at the UZ Brussel is one of the largest in the world. Karen Sermon has also been very active in the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology (https://www.eshre.eu), as a coordinator for the special interest groups “reproduction and genetics”, and later “stem cells”. She was also one of the founders of the ESHRE PGD Consortium (https://www.eshre.eu/Data-collection-and-research/Consortia/PGD-Consortium.aspx) which still today is an important source of information on the daily practice of PGD, and an influential voice in policy making at different levels. Currently, she is a member of the Executive Committee of ESHRE (https://www.eshre.eu/Home/Committees/Executive-Committee.aspx )

Currently, Karen Sermon has research projects in the field of human pluripotent stem cells and in reproductive genetics, more precisely in the origin of chromosomal abnormalities in human embryos.