Born in Granby, Québec, Canada in 1958, Coulombe obtained his bachelor degree in Biochemistry (1981) and his PhD in Molecular Biology (1988) at the University of Montreal before undertaking postdoctoral work at the University of Toronto and the Free University of Brussels (ULB).
Dick Leonard has been a Visiting Professor at the Free University of Brussels and a Senior Adviser at the Centre for European Policy Studies.
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He was born in Antwerp, and began his education at the Koninklijk Atheneum (E: Royal Atheneum) of Antwerp, where he was influenced by the Flemish writer and liberal politician Jan van Beers, and he obtained a law degree at the Free University of Brussels (now split into the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel).
Kraïtchik was « agrégé » of the Free University of Brussels, engineer at the “Société Financière de Transports et d'Entreprises Industrielles (Sofina)”, and director of the “Institut des Hautes Etudes de Belgique”.
Researcher at the ULB, the French Free University of Brussels between 1953 and 1958 and at the R.U.G. University of Ghent from 1958 until 1962.
The species was described from specimens collected in the Idukki district of Kerala by S.D. Biju from the Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute in Palode, India and Franky Bossuyt from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Free University of Brussels), in 2003.
Both the specific name, "vrijeuni", and the acronym in the common name, "VUB", refer to Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Free University of Brussels.