Dr. Frans van Overveld was born on 13 April 1959 in Bergen op Zoom, The Netherlands. He studied Medical Biology at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, with main directions Haematology and Immunology. He is Assistant Professor of Respiratory Immunology at University College Roosevelt. In 1988, he obtained his PhD in Medical Sciences on “Some aspects of mast cell subtypes from human lung tissue” at the same university. In 1991 he was registered as Immunologist.

From 1988 to 2003 he was employed as a postdoctoral scientist at the Department of Respiratory Medicine of the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Here, he was involved in both fundamental and clinical research, the management of a research laboratory, and the education of students. The main areas of interest were inflammatory processes and immunological mechanisms in acute lung injury and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in relation to treatment.

From 2004 to 2008 he was employed as Study Director at PM Research Laboratories in Leuven, Belgium. During this time he focussed on the aspects of cigarette smoking and lung disease. Since 2009, he is employed as Scientific Writer at 4Clinics, Waterloo, Belgium, where the emphasis is on infectious diseases and prevention. In 1992, he was awarded the Belgian Award for Allergology and Clinical Immunology, and in 1988, the Staub and Bovet Award, both for his work on mast cells.

He is member of several professional organisations, e.g. Netherlands Respiratory Society, the Dutch Society for Immunology, and the European Histamine Research Society. He is also reviewer for several scientific journals, e.g. European Journal of Pharmacology, Pulmonary Pharmacology and Therapeutics, and International Journal of COPD. He was member of the Task Force for Induced Sputum of the European Respiratory Society and participated in the organisation of some conferences and courses.

Mast cell biology; Respiratory Immunology; Smoking and Lung Disease; Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).