Ruben Guisson

 As supply chain assessment expert Ruben provides support to businesses and projects, while continuously improving MooV based on emerging business needs. 

Dirk Vangeneugden

Dirk Vangeneugden is project and business developer at VITO in the fields of sustainable materials and chemistry. He is strongly engaged in national and international R&D projects on chemical catalysis and sorption, lightweight composites and future generation batteries. Fields of expertise include 3D printing, surface engineering and coating as well as CO₂ capture and conversion. He is inventor on over 15 patent applications and has great interest in management of intellectual property rights. He is actively involved in technology transfers to industry and supporting spin-off initiatives.

Jeroen Büscher

Jeroen Büscher is leading the VITO team working in the field of electrical storage. Together with that team Jeroen is focused on the development of technologies and services to make safer, more reliable and more performant batteries that support sustainable mobile and stationary applications. Since 2011, he has been coordinating and participating in several projects within Europe on electrical storage, e-mobility and smart grids. He is also representing VITO/EnergyVille in European collaboration efforts on battery development like the European Battery Alliance and the ETIP Batteries Europe.

Erik De Schutter

Erik De Schutter is your guide to ‘heat and cold’ energy technology and state-of-the-art ready-to-use energy research. With his background in information technology, he coordinates and drives the deployment of EnergyVille’s sustainable intelligent heating solutions across Europe for district heating, thermal storage and conversion.

Dirk Vanhoudt

Dirk Vanhoudt’s main research topic is the development of technology for the next generation district heating grids. In that context, he is technical coordinator of the Horizon 2020-projects STORM and TEMPO.

Kristel Boonen

Kris Boonen is business developer for Smart Energy in the built environment at VITO/EnergyVille, a collaboration between the Flemish research partners VITO, KU Leuven, imec and UHasselt in the field of sustainable energy and intelligent energy systems. She plays an active role in promoting the transition to a sustainable and circular built environment with market ready technologies.

Jurgen Decloedt

Jurgen Decloedt is business developer within VITO’s Remote Sensing Unit, responsible for the valorization of the research expertise, products and services towards the industry.  He leads from a commercial perspective several projects that have a focus on digitizing agriculture, ranging from drone based phenotyping on small scale fields  to satellite based solutions monitoring large production fields.

Patrick De Boever

Inge Mertens

Inge Mertens, PhD, is coordinator of the Centre for Proteomics and co-promotor of the EU-7FP Biomargin project, that funded the initial discovery phase of the biomarkers.

Roel Vleeschouwers

Carolin Spirinckx

Carolin Spirinckx is activity leader of the team developing sustainability solutions within the built environment, coordinator of several EU projects, and plays an active role in several arenas promoting the transition to a sustainable and circular built environment

Mohammad Meraj Alam

Mohammad Meraj Alam, PhD is the co-inventor and co-promotor of FlexThor in VITO/Energyville. He has done his PhD in Electrical Engineering from University of Port as a Marie Curie fellow. He has more than 7 years of experience in renewable energy technologies and a passionate entrepreneur. He was the founder of RoofSolar, an idea that came out of EIT Climate Launchpad in 2017.

Koen De Ridder

Koen De Ridder has a background in physics and climate modelling. He is a senior researcher at VITO, focusing on climate impact assessment and the development of sectoral climate services, among others within the European Copernicus ‘Climate Change Service’ programme.

Bruno Reyntjens

Since June 2017, Bruno Reyntjens is Commercial Director at VITO. He studied in Ghent as bioscience engineer. Bruno has followed a versatile, professional path in technical commercial sectors: business development, business management, product management and product development. From Belgium, he has always worked in strongly internationally oriented positions amongst others on the functionality of gluten egg white at the R&D lab of Amylum in Aast, on chemistry and biofuels at Proviron in Hemiksem and Ostend and on technical polyurethane foams for different niche applications at Recticel in Wetteren. At VITO, Bruno is focused on the transformation of a strongly research driven organization towards an excellent and more valorization driven research organization that answers to the innovation needs of companies and governments. Bruno also coordinates the international activities for VITO.

Hans Bruyninckx

Hans Bruyninckx is the Executive Director of the European Environment Agency, taking office on 1 June, 2013. He was born in Schoten, Belgium in 1964. Dr Bruyninckx studied undergraduate and master’s degrees in political science specialising in international relations at Antwerp University and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He also completed an additional programme in development studies at Université Catholique de Louvain.

He completed a PhD degree in 1996 at Colorado State University on the topic of international environmental politics, subsequently teaching at several other universities in the United States and Europe, including Colorado State University, Canisius College and Wageningen University.

From 2010 until his appointment at the EEA, he was head of the HIVA Research Institute in Leuven, Belgium, a policy-oriented research institute associated with the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, where he was also head of the Political Science department from 2007 to 2010. Dr Bruyninckx has also been a senior member of the interdisciplinary Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies and promoter-coordinator of the Flemish Policy Research Centre on Transitions for Sustainable Development (TRADO).

Over the last 20 years, he has conducted and managed policy-oriented research in the areas of environmental politics, climate change, and sustainable development. He was responsible for research in the domains of policy evaluation, monitoring and reporting, methodology development, environmental policy integration, and more recently also on long-term transition policies. His experience pertains to the level of the regions (Flanders in a comparative European perspective), the EU Member States, the EU level, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and processes of global environmental governance (climate change in particular).

His academic expertise lies primarily in the field of European and international environmental policy, studying the effects of globalisation on the global governance of environmental issues and sustainable development. From this perspective he has also studied global production and consumption systems, as well as issues relating to distribution and justice. He has taught courses on the topics of global environmental politics and global environmental governance in relation to the European Union (EU), publishing extensively on EU environmental policies and its role as an actor in global environmental governance.

Dr Bruyninckx was involved in numerous policy processes as an advisory board member, involved in steering groups of government agencies, and as academic policy advisor to governmental agencies and other key actors. In addition, he has worked intensely with civil society and business actors, in support of public-private initiatives or private regulatory approaches to environmental, climate change and sustainability issues. Furthermore, he was president of the board of Bond Beter Leefmilieu (The Association for a Better Environment), a Flemish umbrella organisation bringing together many different environmental groups.

Dr Bruyninckx speaks fluent English, French and German in addition to his native Flemish. During his career he has conducted research in more than a dozen different countries. He is a keen sailor as well as an outdoor and sports enthusiast.

Wim Michiels

Proviron Holding, family owned producer en marketer of niche additives and ingredients for plastics, CASE, pharma, animal health, automotive, aviation, construction …
2 plants in Belgium, 1 in USA, sales office in China
240 people, turnover €75 M, export to 500 customers in 100 countries, ebitda €10 M
2000-2002: product manager: implementation of a broad customer oriented service model into a Business-to-Business world.
2002-2005: business director: streamlining sales, marketing, product development and supply chain
2005- today: managing director and board member: meeting interesting independent board members
2007- today: CEO: managing Proviron through crisis years,
transition from process development to product development,
streamlining the product portfolio: less turnover and people to achieve higher absolute margin
product development and marketing ready to expand sound sales

Johan Geysen

Johan Geysen supports the translation of VITO research results into valorization concepts. He is an experienced mentor & trainer in (sustainable & social) entrepreneurship.  He contributes to the VITO Tech Transfer Office, that realised seven startups in the past four years.

Marc Lor

Since March 2019, Marc Lor is Managing Director at Servaco Product Testing. He studied chemistry at the Catholic University of Leuven and obtained a PhD degree in Sciences (Chemistry) at that same university. During his professional career he has worked at Belgian Building Research Institute (BBRI) in the domains of health and safety aspects of building materials and sustainable construction and at VITO in the domain of indoor air quality and product emissions testing.  Marc is appointed as Belgian expert in the field of dangerous substances in several technical committees and working groups at CEN, EOTA and European Commission level.  He is also the convenor of the Belgian mirror committee of CEN/TC 351 and active as a technological consultant in the domain of health and safety aspects of (building) materials.

Koen Meuleman

Martin Slooijer

Martin has a background in Environmental Engineering, and has been active in environmental contracting on the international market for over 20 years. Started as project manager, later as manager of the international department of a leading soil and groundwater remediation company. As manager he was responsible for the international business development, as well as the implementation of the international projects, successfully implementing projects in over 20 countries from Europe to Asia and North and South America. In 2016 Martin founded with private investors the GreenSoil Group, specialised in biological remediation projects, by now conducting such projects in over 12 countries, in Europe, South America and Africa. GreenSoil is investing in development of new technologies in bioremediation and for this is working with different partners amongst which VITO.

Bart Swaelens

Bart Swaelens is Head of Tech Transfer and Venture Development and as such responsible for transferring or licensing VITO technology to companies and/or creating spin-offs.

Johan Vangrunderbeek

Johan Vangrunderbeek is Single Point Of Contact for SME’s and Flemish companies in search of the appropriate technology and researcher(s) within the VITO/EnergyVille organisation. He advises on co-financing opportunities, additional expertise and complementary partners. He can rely on a broad network and expertise as researcher, manager and business developer.

Bruno Reyntjens

Since June 2017, Bruno Reyntjens is Commercial Director at VITO. He studied in Ghent as bioscience engineer. Bruno has followed a versatile, professional path in technical commercial sectors: business development, business management, product management and product development. From Belgium, he has always worked in strongly internationally oriented positions amongst others on the functionality of gluten egg white at the R&D lab of Amylum in Aast, on chemistry and biofuels at Proviron in Hemiksem and Ostend and on technical polyurethane foams for different niche applications at Recticel in Wetteren. At VITO, Bruno is focused on the transformation of a strongly research driven organization towards an excellent and more valorization driven research organization that answers to the innovation needs of companies and governments. Bruno also coordinates the international activities for VITO.