Katrien Benhalima is staff-member of the department of Endocrinology at the University Hospital Gasthuisberg Leuven and associate Professor at KU Leuven (Belgium). She has a senior clinical research fellowship from the Flemish Research Council (FWO). Her clinical areas of interest include new technologies for type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes in young adults, gestational diabetes (GDM) and pre-gestational diabetes & pregnancy. Her research is focused on GDM, pregestational diabetes and pregnancy, and the long-term metabolic risk in women with a history of GDM. She was the PI of a large cohort comparing different screening strategies for GDM and she was the PI of a large RCT investigating a mobile-based lifestyle intervention postpartum in women with a history of GDM. She is the principal investigator of several large ongoing RCT’s, including on continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) in GDM and on the prevention of diabetes postpartum with the use of semaglutide on top of lifestyle in women with a history of GDM. In addition, she was the PI of the CRISTAL trial, evaluating the MiniMed 780G system in pregnancies complicated by type 1 diabetes.
She is actively involved in the ‘Diabetic Pregnancy Study Group’ (DPSG) associated with EASD. She won several awards for her research such as the rising star researcher award by Primary Care Diabetes Europe, the Belgium Novo Nordisk award for Diabetetology, the Dr. Karel-Lodewijk Verleysen award of the ‘Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium’, and in 2021 the Joseph Hoet Research award from DPSG. She was the chair of an international group of experts to develop a consensus on the use of CGM and automated delivery systems in pregnant women with type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes and GDM.