De Baetselier Irith

Dr. Irith De Baetselier completed her PhD in Biomedical Sciences in 2021, in the domain of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs). She has been working as a scientist at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Belgium since 2010. Since 2018, she has held the role of coordinator of the National Reference Centre for STIs in Belgium. Additionally, she serves as the Belgian representative of the European Gonococcal Antimicrobial Surveillance Program (Euro-GASP) and is a member of various committees including the STI Network Coordination Committee of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), Euro-Test, and STI International Exchange.

She has extensive experience in the field of STIs, evident by her substantial contribution to the scientific literature. Research topics are STI epidemiology, including mpox, lymphogranuloma venereum, pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV and its potential impact on the STI epidemic among men who have sex with men, HIV/STI diagnostics, and antimicrobial resistance of N. gonorrhoeae and M. genitalium. Currently, One of her research topics is decentralized HIV/STI diagnostics including online home based self-sampling programs and innovative self-sampling methods to facility home-based or decentralized HIV/STI testing. In that framework, our team developed the Collect2Know (C2K) device, an innovative device to facilitate capillary blood macro self-collection.  Moreover, she has gained significant expertise in designing and conducting multi-centric prospective or cross-sectional studies related to HIV/STI prevention in both high- and low-resource settings.