Since 2012 she is president of the Nutrition Team at Vrije Universiteit Brussel/Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussel. The multidisciplinary Team realized hospital-wide a higher quality of care concerning nutrition: standardized nutritional screening at admission, protocol-guided nutritional therapy on the ward and in ICU, quality-improvement of nutritional therapy in the Hemodialysis population, data gathering and benchmarking etc.
Her scientific work is focused on clinical research in critically ill patients and resulted in a PhD Thesis entitled “Energy Expenditure and Nutritional Therapy in Critically ill Patients” in 2015. The research group of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel/Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussel (Brussels Health Campus) is renowned in different domains of clinical research.
The domains of expertise comprise nutrition in critical care setting, metabolism and nutrition of ICU and cardiac surgery patients and nutrition in oncology.
Professor De Waele acts as a promotor and co-promotor for several doctorandi, and as a clinical tutor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel for medical students, pharmacists and dieticians in formation. She has published more than sixty articles in peer-reviewed journals, including 6 as first author.