On March 29, 2019, Elias Van de Vijver successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis "Development of IPM tools for the management of Oulema beetles in winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)" and was awarded the title of Doctor of Applied Biological Sciences. Elias was supervised by Geert Haesaert, Bernard De Baets and Guy Smagghe.

On March 27, 2019, Hang Zhan was awarded the title of Doctor of Mathematics for his Ph.D. thesis "Cross-migrativity and modularity of binary operations in the context of the study of uninorms" by Shandong University, China. Hang was supervised by Hua-Wen Liu and Bernard De Baets.