Our mission is to advance the field of digital PCR.

Our center seeks to expand the use of digital PCR by investigating various applications, through collaboration with academic and non-academic end-users and through collaboration with digital PCR instrument providers. We focus on assay design, raw data analysis and subsequent statistical analysis of digital PCR experiments

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Our founding

In 2012 several research groups at Ghent University were among the pioneers in using digital PCR in the field of HIV research, CNV detection, but also in the field of statistical analysis. Since 2015 we have started providing a yearly specialist course on dPCR and in 2017 we decided to start the Ghent University Digital PCR Center, which aims to cluster the expertise on digital PCR from various Ghent University Research groups

Our team

Ward De Spiegelaere
Steering committee
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine

Ward De Spiegelaere

Ward heads the dPCR facility at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. He works on higher order multiplexing and partition clustering for various dPCR applications, including pathogen detection, mutation analysis and quality control of RNA and DNA by dPCR.


Ward.DeSpiegelaere@UGent.be

Wim Trypsteen
Steering committee
Faculty of Medicine and Health Science


Wim Trypsteen

Research on treshold setting, applications of dPCR in absolute HIV DNA and RNA quantification and analysis of HIV intactness


Wim.Trypsteen@UGent.be

Olivier Thas
Steering committee
Faculty of Science


Olivier Thas

Olivier's research focusses on the development and application of flexible statistical methods for the analysis of biomolecular quantitation experiments.


Olivier.Thas@UGent.be

Jo Vandesompele
Steering committee
Faculty of Medicine and Health Science


Jo Vandesompele

Jo has a long-standing track record in method development for PCR based quantification of nucleic acids. The lab focuses on PCR primer design, the study of pre-analytical variables, and data-analysis. Applications are being developed in the context of oncology and liquid biopsies.


Jo.Vandesompele@UGent.be

David Gleerup
Doctoral Fellow
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine


David Gleerup

David’s work is focused on designing and validating new higher order multiplex assays for digital PCR within the fields of both veterinary and human medicine.


DavidGrandjean.Gleerup@UGent.be

Antoon Lievens
Visiting Scientist


Antoon Lievens

Molecular biologist & statistician with a career in method qPCR & dPCR development in the fields of GMO, Food Fraud, and plant breeding. Focus on research and development of (d)dPCR analysis tools.


antoon.lievens.basf@gmail.com

Matthijs Vynck
Postdoctoral Researcher


Matthijs Vynck

Biostatistician with molecular biology background focussing on clustering analysis of dPCR data and statistical data analysis of dPCR experiments


Matthijs.Vynck@UGent.be

Melanie De Rijck
Laboratory Technician


Melanie De Rijck

Laboratory technician with ample experience with different dPCR platforms


Melanie.DeRijck@UGent.be

Our Alumni

Yao Chen
Doctoral Fellow
Faculty of Science


Yao Chen

Yao's research focuses on the statistical analysis of higher-order multiplexing dPCR data. She also develops visualization tools to make dPCR data exploratorion easier.
Yao finished her PhD on 21 February 2025


Yao.Chen@UGent.be