Matthew Holt is based at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain and Disease Research. He originally trained as a biochemist at the University of Liverpool, before pursuing research into the physiology of synaptic transmission at the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology, obtaining his Ph.D. degree from the University of Cambridge. He followed this with post-doctoral training in the lab of Reinhard Jahn at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany. Since 2012, he has been an independent VIB group leader and professor at the KU Leuven, working on the role of astrocyte-neuron interactions in control of CNS function.