President : Professor Jan Lerut


Prof. Jean-Bernard Otte was trained at UCL, in USA and Paris.
He has spent his entire career at UCL-Université Catholique de Louvain, first at Sint-Pieters Ziekenhuis in Leuven until 1976, later on at Cliniques Saint-Luc, Brussels until his retirement in 2002.
At UCL, he developed since 1972 a department of pediatric surgery, discipline until then absent at UCL, and a liver transplant program from 1984. In fact, this program started in Leuven in 1969 with Prof. Paul-Jacques Kestens.They performed in 1969 one of the very first liver transplant in an adult and in 1971 the first European successful liver transplant in a young child. The liver transplant program included an adult section, managed with coworkers, Prof. Bernard de Hemptinne and, since 1971, with Prof.Jan Lerut, and a pediatric section to which he was particularly dedicated. This pediatric program was immediately created in a multidisciplinary fashion (including hepatologists, anesthetists, intensivists, pathologists, radiologists , operative theatre, nursing care, psychologists…) with a holistic vision of the ill child. This feature being unique in the 90’s attracted the confidence of pediatric hepatologists in various European and non-European countries..This collaboration was coupled with the training of many foreign colleagues. The Cliniques Universitaires Saint-Luc have gained considerable experience in this area, exceeding more than 800 cases in 2015 due to the continuation of the program by Prof.Jean de Ville de Goyet (current director of the pediatric liver transplant program at Bambino Gesu, Rome) and Prof.Raymond Reding, current successor of Prof. Otte . The shortage of postmortem grafts led them to develop a program of liver transplantation with parental living donor , with a total experience currently exceeding over 250 cases.
On the academic side, Jean-Bernard Otte was Professor at the UCL where he teached pediatric surgery at the medical school. He was elected at the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium in 1993 which he chaired in 2013. In addition to the usual implications of the presidency, he particularly endeavored to focus on organ transplantation and pediatric medicine, by recruiting new members and organizing various symposia, with, for many of them, the close collaboration with the Koninklijke Academie voor Geneeskunde van Belgie.
Philippe Tob is the second son of Herman Tob. Mr. Tob is a civil chemical engineer, specialized in water purification and membrane based solutions. He holds a MBA in General Management from the Vlerick Business School.