Dirk Elewaut is a full professor of rheumatology and immunology and Chair of the Department of Rheumatology at Ghent University Hospital, a EULAR and FOCIS center of excellence. He obtained his MD at Ghent University in 1991 and his PhD in 1997 at the same institution. Following postdoctoral research at the University of California San Diego and the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology he joined the faculty of the Department of Rheumatology at Ghent University Hospital in 2001. He has published more than 190 scientific publications, and is heading a team of 20 researchers of the Laboratory of Molecular Immunology and Inflammation at the same department. The team has recently joined the Inflammation Research Center (IRC) of the Flanders Research Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) where Dirk Elewaut has been appointed as principal investigator. His research interests are centered around translational aspects of immune regulation to combat inflammatory arthritis and associated joint damage, with special focus on iNKT cells and related innate like T cells.