In memoriam Olivier Van Caenegem
With great sadness we inform you that Prof dr Olivier Van Caenegem (°01/01/1969) passed away last monday, 2nd Augustus 2021. The Belgian Cardiac and Intensive care community have lost an excellent clinical cardiologist and scientist.
Olivier obtained his medical degree in 1994 at the Université Catholique de Louvain where he was further trained to become a cardiologist in 1999 and an intensive care specialist in 2001. He finished his PhD in 2016 on the impact of hypothermic machine perfusion on ischaemia/reperfusion injury during heart transplantation. In 2019 he was appointed as head of the Intensive Cardiovascular Care Unit at the UCL.
Olivier was active in many Belgian organizations. He was the chairman of the Belgian Interdisciplinary Working group on Acute Cardiology (2019-2020). He was greatly involved in the national heart transplant program and was the secretary of the Belgian Transplant Society (2014-2019).
During his professional life, he substantially contributed to clinical research and to the education of many students and cardiologists in training.
Above all, we will remember Olivier as an enthusiastic, warm and enjoyable colleague. It was a pleasure to organize our recent BIWAC congress together. He will be missed by all of us.
Our thoughts are with his family and we wish them strength to overcome this loss.
On behalf of the BIWAC board,
Hannah Schaubroeck, BIWAC president