Gunnar Naulaers works as a staff member neonatology at the University Hospital Leuven since 1997 and is professor at KU Leuven at the department Development and Regeneration. Since 2013 he is the president of the Belgian Newborn College and responsible for the national neonatal database. His research focuses mainly on the neonatal brain. His first work was mainly research regarding brain oxygenation using near-infrared spectroscopy, but this enlarged to EEG, cerebral autoregulation, neurovascular coupling and infant mental health. He works together with different research groups in other fields. There is a collaboration since 20 years with ESAT-SISTA, the engineering department of KU Leuven that is specialized in signal analysis and this resulted in different new algorithms for detection of cerebral autoregulation, neonatal convulsions, brain maturation, neonatal sleep and neurovascular coupling. Further collaboration was also sought with psychologists and child psychiatry within the Resilience project where 136 preterm infants are followed up over a long time for attachment, social interaction and development an in the TIARA project, where early detection of autism is studied. The brain research was further extended to low income countries with projects at UNIKIN, Kinshasa, DR Congo.