Professor Freya Blekman of the Fee University of Brussels (VUB) was awarded the prestigious CMS LPC Fellowship 2013 by the American Fermilab. Like its European counterpart Cern, Fermilab specialises in high-energy physics, which examines elementary particles that make up the universe. The fellowship encourages co-operation with international scientists. She also receives an investment of about €42,000. Blekman works at the university’s Interuniversity Institute for High Energies and she co-ordinates the Beyond-Two-Generations research group, which unites about 30 universities.

The European Research Council has awarded €10 million to the research of four Flemish scientists. The researchers, who each receive an Advanced Grant worth €2.5 million, are chemist Piet Herdewijn of KU Leuven, engineer Paul Heremans of imec, engineer Johan Schoukens of VUB and Greet Van den Berghe of the intensive care medicine department at University Hospital Leuven.

The mild local climate could be responsible for a lack of stress among the country’s cows, according to research carried out by the universities of Ghent and Leuven and the Flemish agricultural research institute Ilvo. In other climates, stress from extreme heat or cold can cause problems for animal welfare and productivity.

A study by the Social Economic Council of Flanders indicates that 18% of Flemish teachers have been victims of harassment by both colleagues and students. Only 84 teachers approached Limits, the contact point for undesirable behaviour at schools. Flemish education magazine Klasse and children’s TV channel Ketnet are calling on schools to break the culture of silence around bullying this week, the official Flemish week against bullying.