Christel Faes

Universiteit Hasselt

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Short bio

Christel Faes is a Belgian biostatistician and Full Professor of Statistics at the Center for Statistics and the Data Science Institute at Hasselt University. She obtained an MSc in Mathematics from the University of Antwerp in 2000 and a PhD in Statistics from Hasselt University in 2004. Her research connects statistical methodology with questions in public health, environmental health, and disease prevention. She works in the field of spatial and spatio-temporal statistics, developing methods that help reveal how health risks vary across regions, populations, and time.

Her work has contributed to COVID-19 modelling, climate-health research, cancer surveillance, and the assessment of heat-related health impacts. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she contributed statistical modelling expertise to the Belgian response, and she advises Flemish initiatives on climate and health. She has published more than 230 peer-reviewed articles and has supervised numerous PhD and master’s students. In addition to her research, she serves as UHasselt Director of the Interuniversity Institute of Biostatistics, a joint research institute of UHasselt and KU Leuven.