Schalk van der Merwe is an associate professor of Medicine in the department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium since 2011.
He obtained his medical degree, MBChB, from the University of Pretoria in 1991. He completed a recidency in Internal Medicine in 1997 and his fellowship in Gastroenterology in 2000. He obtained a PhD from the Free University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands in 2005. His laboratory has focused on translational research in infectious disease and immunology related to the gastrointestinal tract and the liver. Since 2017 he heads the Laboratory of Hepatology in the department of Chronic diseases, aging and metabolism (CHROMETA), at the University of Leuven.
He has published more than 180 peer reviewed publications in the field of Gastroenterology and Hepatology including publications in NATURE, GASTROENTEROLOGY, PNAS, GUT, HEPATOLOGY, Journal of Hepatology with an H-index of 49. He is ad hoc reviewer for multiple journals including GUT, Journal of Hepatology and ENDOSCOPY.
As a hepatologist and interventional endoscopist his clinical interests center around the management of patients with liver disease including liver transplantation, as well as hepatobiliary interventions related to the liver, gallbladder and pancreas such as advanced ERCP and therapeutic EUS. He chaired the first ESGE guideline on Therapeutic Endoscopic Ultrasound in 2021