Johan Thevelein received his PhD in Biology (Botany, biochemistry-physiology) at the University of Leuven (Belgium) and spent two years as post-doctoral researcher at Yale University (New Haven, USA). He was appointed PhD student, post-doc and permanent researcher at FWO, and then professor at KU Leuven. In 2002 his laboratory was selected as new VIB department and he was appointed Department Director. He has been visiting professor at several universities and special visiting researcher in the Science without Borders program in Brazil. He has developed world-leading research in the field of cellular nutrient sensing using yeast as experimental model. He elucidated the sensing and signaling network for glucose activation of the Ras-cAMP-PKA pathway, discovering the first nutrient-sensing G-protein coupled receptor and the molecular connection between sugar breakdown and the oncogenic Ras proteins revealing the importance of the Warburg effect for oncogenic potency, and also discovered nutrient transceptors as new cellular regulation mechanism.