Choose Belgium is a video portrait series giving the floor to international researchers who have chosen Belgium to pursue their scientific career.
Short format, one minute thirty, designed for social media and usable as a promotional tool by anyone in contact with international candidates considering a move to Belgium.
Attracting and retaining international scientific talent is a shared concern across all Belgian authorities active in research. Choose Belgium grew out of that shared concern. Rather than an institutional pitch, the series takes a direct approach: letting researchers already based in Belgium tell their own story, what brought them here, and what makes them stay.
Each episode runs around one minute thirty. The videos are subtitled and built to circulate on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. They can also be used by partner institutions on their own channels, or by researchers themselves in their conversations with candidates considering mobility.
The series brings together the federal, community and regional authorities active in supporting research in Belgium:
Each partner highlights trajectories from its own ecosystem. Together, they reflect the diversity of Belgian research.
After a PhD in the United States, a postdoc at NASA Langley and a stint at the European Commission, Noel Catherine Baker now leads the ALTIUS mission, a satellite dedicated to monitoring the ozone layer, at the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy. She talks about what made her stay in Belgium.
A German art historian, Melis Avkiran studies the paintings of Hans Memling in Bruges, where they were created more than five centuries ago. Her research, at the intersection of technical analysis and art history, is part of Belspo's FED-tWIN programme, which funds joint research positions between the federal scientific institutions and Belgian universities.
