Guido Van den Ackerveken new Professor of Translational Plant & Microbial Biology
Prof. Guido Van den Ackerveken鈥檚 goal is to build fundamental knowledge on plant diseases and bring it from the university into the field, with the help of green life science companies. 鈥淲e study plants and pathogens to understand how diseases works; they apply it in real life.鈥 Van den Ackerveken was appointed Professor of Translational Plant & Microbial Biology on 1 November 2016.
Prof. Van den Ackerveken has plenty of experience in the valorisation of his scientific work. He gained international renown with his research into plant diseases caused by oomycetes: fungi-like microorganisms, such as downy mildew pathogens, which are able to avoid crop immune systems. He deciphered the genetic foundations of plant susceptibility to these pathogens.
Patents
Based on the fundamental knowledge gained through his research, he developed a technology to grow crops that are resistant to downy mildew, called DMR technology. In 2007, he and his team were presented with a prestigious award for their work, the Leverhulme Technology Transfer Award. He also has two patents to his name. 鈥淭he vegetable breeding company Enza Zaden aquired the patents and is now developing resistant vegetable crops without the need for a GMO approach. We work closely together with them, and hopefully within a few years seeds with our DMR technology will reach the market鈥, Van den Ackerveken explains.
More cooperation
The results of his research have also sparked several other partnerships and projects with vegetable breeding companies 鈥淚鈥檝e noticed that companies are very open to contact, and are interested in new ideas for disease resistance. Cooperation with them provides us with quite a bit of knowledge from the field and materials that we can use in our fundamental research鈥, says Van den Ackerveken. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a win-win situation.鈥
Societal relevance
Van den Ackerveken鈥檚 appointment is in line with Utrecht 木瓜福利影视鈥檚 philosophy of greater emphasis on the societal relevance and impact of its research. Professor Van den Ackerveken鈥檚 research, which falls under the focus area Future Food and the strategic theme Sustainability, is a real-life example of that.
Education
Prof. Van den Ackerveken plans on embedding the issue of societal impact deeper in the education provided to students and PhD candidates. Several courses already provide guest lectures by figures from the industry, and Van den Ackerveken organises networking events that attract large numbers of researchers and companies. 鈥淢any of the people who earned their PhD鈥檚 at our chair group now work in the Research and Development departments of plant breeding companies. I see the training of expert researchers as another important form of valorisation.鈥
Career
studied in Wageningen, earning his PhD there in 1993. After working for several years in France and Germany as a postdoc, he came to the Biology Department at Utrecht 木瓜福利影视 in 1999. In 2002, NWO awarded him a VIDI grant. His new chair position is part of the chair group Plant-Microbe Interactions at the .