Tom Beckers is Professor of Psychology at KU Leuven, affiliated with the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences and the Leuven Brain Institute. His research concerns basic psychological principles and neurobiological mechanisms of learning and memory in humans (including children) and rodents. He has a particular interest in the role of learning and conditioning in psychopathology (in specific anxiety, addiction and ADHD).

After obtaining his PhD from KU Leuven, he was an FWO Research Fellow at KU Leuven, visiting assistant professor at Binghamton University and visiting scholar at UCLA, before becoming an assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam in 2008 and associate research professor at KU Leuven in 2010 (full professor since 2014). His research has been supported by competitive grants from the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO, Belgium), the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO, Netherlands), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC, UK) and the European Research Council (ERC), amongst others. He has published over 100 papers in peer-reviewed international journals and is editorial board member for Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Acta Psychologica, Experimental Psychology and Behaviour Research and Therapy.