Niel Hens his interest mainly lies in the modeling of infectious diseases but also in models for missing data and flexible multivariate models. He is currently coordinating several projects, within the framework of several national and international grants, and is supervising and co-supervising several PhD students.  He is the central actor in the close and very fruitful collaboration between CHERMID , CEV , VAXINFECTIO , University of Antwerp and CENSTAT, I-BIOSTAT, Hasselt University . As a result of his dedication and his accomplishments in this collaboration, he is now holder of the scientific chair in evidence based vaccinology, which is sponsored in 2009-2011 by Wyeth at Antwerp University with promoters Prof. dr. Philippe Beutels and Prof. dr. Pierre Van Damme. Whereas his research in the area of infectious diseases mainly focused on the analysis of serological data and the estimation of epidemiological parameters such as the force of infection and the reproduction number, he took the initiative and is the driving force to extend the centers’ expertise in the modeling of infectious diseases, in the direction of epidemic models, stochastic and simulation models, network models, etc.