Current Position: Emeritus Professor & head of LabMET-Faculty of Vbioscience Engineering Ghent University and scientific adviser to the Wetsus Water Institute at Leeuwarden and the Dutch Water Institute KWR, Netherlands
Profile: He has served in various international review panels like the DELFT-Cluster and SENSE research schools in the Netherlands, the EPFL environmental study center in Lausanne Switzerland, the Helmholtz research institute Leipzig Germany, the Environmental Biotechnology Cooperative Research Centre in Brisbane Australia and the Danish GEUS Institute on water and climate change.
His research has received international accolades including the most prestigious scientific award in Belgium — the National Science Foundation Excellence in Science Prize (2005). He has received many professional awards including the IWA Imhoff Award for his contribution to water biotreatment, the IWA and the International Society for Microbial Ecology (ISME) Ardern and Lockett Award for his contribution to water engineering and microbial ecology, and the Einstein Professorship for his contribution to environmental sciences from the Chinese Academy of Applied Sciences at Shenyang.
He has served on many international advisory committees including appointment as General-Secretary of the European Environmental Research Organization (EERO), and the European Research Council (ERC) in the domain of Life Sciences. Recently, he was elected chairman of the board of the Science Foundation FWO of Flanders, Belgium, and was nominated Honorary Fellow at the KWR Watercycle Research Institute of the Netherlands.
Expertise: microbial resource management, aerobic wastewater treatment, anaerobic digestion of waste waters and sludges, solid state fermentation of organic residues, and bio-remediation processes of soils and sediments, life sciences.
