Danielle Swinne (Brussels, 1945) earned her Ph.D. from the Free University of Brussels in 1977. She specialized in medical mycology, a field in which she had, when she retired in 2005, more than forty years’ experience mostly gained at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in the laboratory of medical mycology created by Raymond Vanbreuseghem. Although she had the opportunity during her career to tackle all the aspects of medical mycology, most of her research dealt with the epidemiology of crytococcosis, which brought her to work in Africa and South America. In 1981, she was award winner of the yearly competition of the Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences and in 1986, award winner of the ordinary supplementary competition of the Royal Academy of Medicine “1984-1985”.

Among many teaching activities, she took in charge in 1997 the specialization course in medical mycology given at the Institute of Tropical Medicine of Antwerp for which she received in 2003 a teaching award delivered by the International Society for Human and Animal Mycology (ISHAM).

She was a member of different international and belgian scientific societies and among others, the Belgian Society for Human and Animal Mycology of which she was president from 2000 till 2005.

 At the same time (1999-2005) she was carrying-on researches focused on yeast taxonomy at the Institute of Public Health in Brussels, as part of the BCCM (Belgian Co-ordinated Collections of Micro-organisms) / IHEM (Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology-Mycology) collection of medical fungi. Member of the Class of Natural and Medical Sciences of our Company since 1997, she was elected as Permanent Secretary in 2005.