On June 11, 2024, Wissam Barhdadi successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis "Advancing individual-based models rooted in metabolic theory: from organism physiology towards community dynamics" and was awarded the title of Doctor of Bioscience Engineering: Mathematical Modelling. Wissam was supervised by Bernard De Baets, Aisling Daly and Jan Baetens. His research was sponsored by the Special Research Fund of Ghent University