Rector
Professor Rik Van de Walle (°1970) is Rector of Ghent University since October 2017. After a successful first term, he was re-elected for a second four-year term in 2021.
Rik Van de Walle obtained a master’s and subsequently a doctoral degree in engineering physics. After a visiting post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Arizona (Tucson, USA) he returned to Ghent University to pursue an academic career.
As a researcher and a professor, Van de Walle’s specialties involved multimedia applications, systems and signals, and data science. He set up the Multimedia Lab, which would grow into a very large research group, renamed as Internet and Data Lab and currently encompassing more than 400 professors and researchers across departmental and even university boundaries.
Multimedia Lab/IDLab was one of the founding research groups of IBBT/iMinds, which has been integrated in 2016 in imec – one of the world’s largest R&D hubs for next-generation semiconductor research. Since 2016, Van de Walle is a member of the Board of Governors of imec.
From 2012 until 2017 Rik Van de Walle was Dean of Ghent University’s Faculty of Engineering and Architecture. He is the former President of CESAER (2020-2023), an association of 50+ universities of science and technology in Europe and beyond, and of VLIR, the Flemish Inter-University Council. He is a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts.
Rector Van de Walle is assisted by Vice-Rector Mieke Van Herreweghe.
Contact
Rector's Office
Campus Ufo, Rectorate
Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 25
T.+32 (0)9 264 30 01
rector@ugent.be