“When I started out, women in this field were very rare”

There are even fewer profiles identical to Katleen Vranckx. Starting with the fact that this bigwig is a woman, and that she has also forged her character with her gender: “When I started out, women in this business were very rare. I remember feeling this particularly in certain parts of the world. There was respect for a man, not for a woman. At one conference, a man insisted on asking the opinion of a white-haired man sitting next to me. I offered to help him because I knew the answer, but no, he insisted that the white-haired man should answer. Except that he didn't know. He finally listened to me, but it took a long time and I had to offer to help him several times".

She smiles. She's thinking of her daughter Billie, 14, who also wants to do “microbiology, like her mom”. “I tell her there's more to life than that, but she wants to do this. A budding passion... Katleen Vranckx loves her job at bioMérieux and sums it up in a form of scientific poetry: “I tell stories to customers through the sequencing of their samples. I tell them about their plant in a new way to help them".

She likes to compare her work in the industrial world to that of a doctor with a patient: “He will interpret the results, make a diagnosis and recommend a change if necessary”.

For her, it's all the same, and on the side of results, i.e. “data”, “there's clearly still under-employment because there's a lack of expertise and a lack of culture. Industrialists don't know what to do with their data...Sometimes when I meet one of them, I realize that he's already been confronted with the same problem three or four times. But since he hasn't changed anything, apart from destroying all his production, it's obvious that it's coming back, it's circular”.

She's the eye that helps manufacturers decode their data

Augmented Diagnostics' approach is a game-changer for her. “It's totally innovative - you can't learn that at university! It's bioMérieux and it's an alliance between technology and expertise", repeats the Belgian scientist.

And in this revolutionary approach, Katleen Vranckx makes her contribution, thanks to her expertise and her ability to take a step to the side. More precisely, she's the eye that helps an industrialist decode his data...
Because she loves to “search, help and tell stories”. Because she always has. Already during her studies and doctorate: “I was advised to stay focused on my research, but I loved helping others to find things”. It's an appetite she then put to good use in her Belgian company Applied Maths, which was subsequently acquired by bioMérieux in 2016. And she's still at it today... “

Me, I like to help... "And to help, you sometimes need to know why there's a Cronobacter there, and not in this place in a factory... I create maps for myself, I pose my hypotheses.... Sometimes there are several growth niches, so I look in the data, in the differences between genomes... It comes down to very little, six out of millions, for example. I proceed a bit like a detective”.

Katleen Vranckx is watching the current transformation of the industrial world with great interest: “Consumers are more and more mature when it comes to information about food products. They are more demanding... And as a result, they are putting the pressure on manufacturers to make a greater efforts”. She hopes that “these efforts in favor of health will continue”, and that they will not be confined to certain international markets, but that “they will develop in domestic markets, because things have to change and food has to stop killing people”.

The Belgian scientist works with this hope.