Following his Masters in Information Technology and Biotechnology, Steve Lefever successfully completed his PhD in Biomedical Sciences in 2012 at UGent. During his post-doctoral mandate, he expanded his skills and gained expertise in the analysis of RNA- and DNA-based high-throughput sequencing data.
His work included the identification of variants associated with neuroblastoma development and progression. In addition, he elucidated novel retina-specific (non-)coding genes and he created an RNA-sequencing based microsatellite instability (MSI) classification workflow, using the large-scale GTEx and TCGA cohorts, respectively. He also has ample expertise with PCR dynamics and assay design. The latter culminated in the foundation of pxlence in 2015, a company whose portfolio is focused on PCR enrichment strategies for targeted resequencing applications.