Els Compernolle and An Schrijvers joined the VRWI (Flemish Council for Science and Innovation) team on 1 April as the Council's new researchers.
Graduating as a bioengineer (KU Leuven) and economist (Cambridge University), Els acquired many years' experience abroad as Senior Policy Analyst for Forfás (Ireland's national advisory board for enterprise and science) and a Course Lecturer at the UCD (University College Dublin) and LSE (London School of Economics). She has spent the past two years working as a Business Advisor for the Enterprise Europe Network in Flanders (Entrepreneurship Agency).
On top of her Master's degree in Eastern European Languages and Culture (Ghent University), An also undertook Media and Communication (Ghent University) and European studies (Jagiellony University, Krakow, Poland), after which she earned a doctorate in Political Sciences at the Centre for EU Studies (Ghent University). She has been associated with the Centre over the past three years in her capacity as postgraduate researcher and teacher.