Prof. Em. Yves Vanlandewijck retired from KU Leuven in 2025 and continues his career at GIH Stockholm, with teaching assignments at Charles University Prague and the International Olympic Academy. With a background in Rehabilitation Sciences, he dedicated his professional life to improving the quality of life of people with disabilities, from rehabilitation towards and throughout the entire athlete career. What follows are a few highlights of more than 40 years of professional dedication:
As a member/chair of the IPC Sport Science Committee, he coordinated 50+ research projects during the Paralympic Games from Atlanta 1996 until PyeongChang 2018. As the principal investigator, he coordinated during more than a decade an international research group studying the relationship between cognitive functioning and sports performance, leading to the re-inclusion of athletes with intellectual impairment in the London 2012 Paralympic Games. His multidisciplinary insights in the sport-specific profiles of athletes with impairments allowed him to (co-)author position stands on classification of Para-athletes with physical and intellectual impairments and 100+ scientific peer-reviewed articles. Prof. Vanlandewijck is the founding editor of the European Journal in Adapted Physical Activity (APA). Throughout his career, he supervised 300+ Master theses in Movement and Rehabilitation Sciences.
As a teacher and program director of the International Master program of Adapted Physical Activity (1990-2022), he inspired 450+ international master students. Between 2006 and 2018, Prof. Vanlandewijck served as the project leader of a VLIR-UOS project developing a Bachelor-Master program in Physiotherapy at the Anton de Kom University of Paramaribo (Suriname). Currently, he is still teaching international cohorts in the International Master program of Sport Ethics and Integrity and the International Master program of Olympic Studies.
Prof. Vanlandewijck is the founder of the Center of Adapted Sports in Leuven – Belgium (1989), a multi-sports organization offering a permanent program of active lifestyle, leisure time physical activity and sports for individuals with disabilities. His initiatives created the foundation for the inclusion of sport coaches in a therapeutic context, bridging rehabilitation to active lifestyle. From 1991 onwards, Prof. Vanlandewijck built the scientific support program for Paralympic athletes, in collaboration with the Belgian Paralympic Committee. In his active free time, Prof. Vanlandewijck is a wheelchair basketball player/coach.
For his contributions to the domain of APA and Para(lympic) Sport, Prof. Vanlandewijck received the European Professional Award for Outstanding Achievements from the European Federation of APA in 2016 and the International Paralympic Committee Scientific Award in 2019. The absolute highlight of international presentations was the Wolffe Lecture 2017 in Denver - Colorado, opening the American College of Sport Medicine Congress.