Jean-Marc Taymans is a bioengineer from the KU Leuven (Belgium). After working as a vaccine process engineer at SmithKline-Beecham Biologicals, he began his doctoral research via the Free University of Amsterdam in the research labs of Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development. In 2004, Dr. Taymans joined KU Leuven to study the molecular pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease (PD) genes. After a Fulbright scholarship at the National Institutes of Health, he joined the UMR-S 1172 research center in Lille (France), a mixed Inserm – Université de Lille – Lille University Hospital center, to further study cell signaling processes in PD while integrating clinical translation of experimental findings from patient biosamples. With a strong focus on LRRK2, Dr. Taymans’s research uses a multidisciplinary approach, from biochemical analysis and cellular models to validation in preclinical models, and has produced more than 45 publications.