Willy Verstraete PhD

Dr. Willy Verstraete is emeritus professor and previous head of the Laboratory of Microbial Ecology and Technology (LabMET - Faculty of Bioscience Engineering) at Ghent University (Belgium). He is an internationally recognized leader in anaerobic biotechnology and R&D related to design, operation and control of processes mediated by mixed microbial cultures. Dr. Verstraete ranks in the list of Highly Cited Researchers and several of his works belong to the top 1% of most cited papers in his field. He has expertise in anaerobic biotechnology as well as drinking water production and aerobic wastewater treatment (in particular with respect to nitrification-denitrification). He has won numerous international awards, including the 2005 Excellence in Science Prize from the Belgian National Science Foundation and the Imhoff Award from the International Water Association (IWA) for his contributions to water biotreatment. In 2014, he became chairman of the Cluster on Resource Recovery of IWA, and in 2015 he was nominated as an advisor to the Dutch Water Institute KWR to deal with aspects of water and resource recovery.

He graduated in 1968 from Gent University as a bio-engineer and earned his Ph.D. degree in microbiology at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (USA)