Han de Winde new chair ACTS Executive Board
30 September 2010
With effect from 1 October 2010, Prof. Han de Winde will be the new chair of the Executive Board of ACTS, the public-private partnership body in the area of catalysis. De Winde succeeds Dr Teun Graafland, who was chair of the Board for a period of almost 2 years. De Winde considers it to be both a privilege and a challenge to work with ACTS and the Regiegroep Chemie on a further expansion, strengthening and internationalisation of innovative chemistry research in the Netherlands. He hopes that this will lead to important contributions to sustainable development in both the national and international contexts.
Prof. J.H. de Winde studied organic chemistry and biochemistry at VU University of Amsterdam. He gained his doctorate in molecular biology from University of Amsterdam in 1992. De Winde then worked for two years at the recently founded BioCentrum Amsterdam and then for five years at the Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. From July 1999 to April 2006 he worked at the research department of DSM Life Science Products in Delft. In July 2002 he became part-time professor of Industrial Genomics at Delft University of Technology and there on 1 April 2006 he was appointed as Professor of Microbial Genetics and Systems Biology and Director of the Department of Biotechnology of the Faculty of Applied Sciences.
Within ACTS, De Winde demonstrated his capabilities in the programme committee of B-Basic. This programme is in a concluding phase and is now being continued in the form of the large BE-Basic consortium that is focusing on the bio-based, sustainable, industrial chemistry of the future. De Winde joined the Executive Board of ACTS in December 2008 and will become its chair with effect from 1 October 2010.
De Winde is the ideal person to usher in a new phase within ACTS. At present we are working hard on elaborating the four Technology Areas for Sustainable Chemistry (TASCs) that will focus on research and innovation in sustainable chemistry, with a strong focus on the application of innovative technology development. At the start of December, ACTS will publish a more detailed description of the TASCs and how industry and the knowledge institutes will participate in these. The TASC programme will be launched during the ACTS symposium on 12 January 2011. ACTS will be responsible for realising these new programmes.