In the spotlight: Martien Groenen, chair of ABG

‘In the spotlight’ is an interview series inspired by the blog series ‘Humans of WUR’ that is published on the WUR Intranet and on Instagram. In this series, we ask one of the employees at ABG to share about his/her/their work activities. The interviewee then gets to decide who should be the next person to be interviewed.

Hello Martien, could you introduce yourself and share a bit about your position is at ABG?

Certainly. I’m Martien Groenen and I’m the chair of the Animal Breeding and Genomics chair group. I’ve been working in that position for 6 ½ years now. Before that I already was a personal professor within the group for 15 years. My responsibility was always the Genomics research in the group, but for the past 6 ½ years I’ve been responsible for all the research within the group.

When and how did you start at ABG?

That was a long time ago! I already started in 1988, so I’ve been part of the group for 35 years. After my PhD I worked at a company for one year, but then I wanted to come back to academia. I started at a postdoc position at ABG, working on Molecular Genetics and Genomics, and already after a year that postdoc was changed to a permanent position. The amount of research in genomics kept growing and I got involved in an increasing number of projects. We got heavily involved in genome sequencing and international consortia.

Can you share something about a project you are currently working on or that you are particularly proud of?

It’s difficult for me to highlight only one project that I’m particularly proud of, especially because ABG is such a big group. We have a lot of talented researchers and there are a lot of ongoing projects that deserve to be put in the spotlight. One project that I’m very proud of is the FAANG (Functional Annotation of Animal Genomes) consortium. We now have several EU funded projects that are connected to FAANG, as well as a new project that started this year, EuroFAANG, which is a coordinated effort to unravel the connection between the genetic make-up of an animal and the observable physical and physiological traits. Another thing that I’m very proud of is that we have more projects on zoo animals and wildlife, not just farm animals. We’re really broadening our field of expertise.

Looking back, having established genomics research strongly at ABG is something I’m very proud of. Animal Breeding and Genomics is one of the leading groups in animal genomics in the world, and that’s something to be proud of.

What motivates/drives you in your work? What is it about your work that gives you energy?

What drives me about my work is the content. Understanding the variation in genomes and how genomes evolve, what happens in the genome and how that relates to the wide variety of phenotypes that we see around us. Variation between different species, but also variation within species. That’s what fascinates and drives me.

Well, I really enjoy biking and reading – novels, not anything related to work – and I also like photography.

Thank you for your time! Now, for the final question, who do you want to nominate for the next interview in this series, and why?

Well, there are a lot of people in the group…But I think I would like to nominate Marta Godia. At ABG we really strive for a better balance within the group, meaning that we want to attract younger staff and more female employees. I think the group has become more diverse over the past few years, and that’s something I’m proud of as well. We have more young researchers in a permanent position, which is important for the long-term viability of the group. So I think that Marta, as a talented, female scientist, would be a good candidate for the next interview in this series.