Geert de Snoo new Director of Netherlands Institute of Ecology
Professor Geert de Snoo, Dean of the Faculty of Science at Leiden University, has been appointed Director of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) with effect from 1 November 2019. He will stand down from his role as Dean of the Faculty of Science with effect from 1 September. De Snoo will remain affiliated to the faculty and Leiden University as professor of Conservation Biology.
Geert de Snoo
Geert de Snoo has been Dean of the Faculty of Science since 1 September 2012. He is seen as a networker who is able to create lasting connections, a person who likes to work beyond the boundaries of individual disciplines. It was at his initiative that, in 2011, the University joined forces with Delft University of Technology and Erasmus University Rotterdam in the shape of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Sustainability, an inter-university partnership that connects research in the natural sciences with technology and expertise in management and business. As Dean, De Snoo set up programmes such as the Data Science Programme, and championed SAILS, the new University stimulus plan in which all of the faculties at the University are participating. He also forged international connections, for instance by establishing the LERU network of deans of natural sciences and intensifying relations with partner universities in China.
Expert
De Snoo is regarded as a national and international expert in the field of biodiversity, the environment and nature conservation. He was awarded a PhD in 1995 for his thesis ‘Unsprayed field margins: implications for environment, biodiversity and agricultural practice.’ In 2003, he was made Professor by Special Appointment of Agrarian Nature Conservation and Landscape Management at Wageningen University. He was appointed professor and Scientific Director of the Institute of Environmental Sciences by Leiden University in 2009. In recent years, he has supervised 30 PhD candidates. His academic work varies from research into nature on farmland to research into protecting lion populations in Africa. De Snoo also communicates scientific insights to a wider audience comprising policymakers and the public, and is a regular media commentator.