Prof Marc van Montagu

Gent University, Belgium and European Group on Life Sciences

Marc Van Montagu was formerly Full Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Genetics at the University of Gent (Belgium) and part-time professor at the Free University of Brussels (VUB). His main fields of research are cell biology, chemistry, virology, biotechnology, engineering, and microbiology. He is well known (with Prof. Jeff Schell) as the inventor of Agrobacterium tumefaciens transformation technology, now used worldwide to produce genetically engineered plants. Having contributed to founding the Belgian biotech company Plant Genetics Systems, he was its Scientific Director for four years and a Member of its Board of Directors. He has won numerous prizes, is a member of many scientific societies, and is on the Editorial Board of more than ten scientific journals. He has produced over 750 publications.