Professor Willy Verstraete

Professor

Ghent University (Belgium)

W Verstraete has a track record in environmental biotech. As a professor at the Ghent University, he focused on the engineering of microbial cultures to bring forward efficient microbial processes for the clean up of various pollutants in soil, aquatic environments and waste gases. His work resulted in the start-up of several spin-offs in the domain of anaerobic digestion, solid waste conversion, water treatment .and treatment of gaseous effluents. In the past 10 years, he focused on resource recovery, with a particular emphasis on the upgrading of nitrogen to microbial protein and the application of the latter either as food, feed, organic fertilizer or biopolymer. He is a highly cited author in the domain of microbial biotechnology and actively involved in several international organisations and agencies dealing with environmental management .