Wim van der Putten - Biography#
Wim van der Putten is Head of the Department of Terrestrial Ecology at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, Special Professor in Functional Biodiversity at Wageningen University & Research, and Honorary Professor Grassland Research Institute (GRI) of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS). He graduated at Wageningen University (1984) and defended his research on 'establishment, growth and degeneration of Ammophila arenaria in coastal foredunes' (performed at the Institute for Ecological Research in Oostvoorne) at Wageningen University in 1989. From 1988 onwards, he was appointed as a Postdoc the institute of Ecology at Heteren. In 1994 he became senior scientist at the department of Plant-Microorganism Interactions and acted as interim head in 1997. In 2000, he became head of the newly established department of Multitrophic Interactions at the Netherlands institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW). In 2003/4 he was visiting guest at Landcare Research, New Zealand.
In 2005, he was awarded a VICI-grant from the Dutch research council, and in 2012 he obtained an ERC-Advanced grant from the European Research Council. Wim was associate/handling editor of a.o. Oikos and Oecologia, and is associate editor of Ecology Letters and Board Reviewing Editor at Science. He has coordinated a number of European research projects (EUREED, CLUE, INVASS, EcoTrain), andhas been PI in others (TLinks, Biorhiz, Consider, Soilservice, EcoFinders, and Liberation). He has been co-editor of a book on Soil Ecology, and the European and Global Atlasses of Soil Biodiversity. He initiated the Wageningen Centre for Soil Ecology (CSE; http://www.soilecology.eu
) and co-established the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative (GSBI; http://www.globalsoilbiodiversity.org). Wim has led the EASAC study on Soils at Risk (2018), is member of the Assembly of the EU Mission Board on Soil Health and Food, chair of the Heineken Environment prize, and has chaired several Peer Reviews (e.g. of Antwerp University). Further details
