She is a professor of oncology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and scientific director at the Jules Bordet Institute in Brussels, Belgium.
She graduated as a medical doctor from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in 1978, where she also met her future husband, Dr. Michael Gebhart.
She became certified in European medical oncology in London in 1989, and earned her PhD from Université Libre de Bruxelles in 1993.
The organisation, which became a legal entity in 1999, is now chaired by Prof. David Cameron and unites 57 academic breast cancer research groups from around the world.
About 30 clinical trials and research programmes are run or in development under its umbrella at any one time, and several of its past studies are already considered landmark and practice-changing.