News
Bart Koelmans succeeds Marten Scheffer as chair holder
Bart Koelmans has succeeded Marten Scheffer as Professor of Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management at Wageningen University & Research. The official commencement date was 1 November 2018. Last year the university awarded Marten Scheffer the honorary title of distinguished professor. He will remain affiliated with the chair group.
Bart Koelmans was already involved in the Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management group and was a professor (holding a personal chair) of Water and Sediment Quality at Wageningen University.
Professor A.A. (Bart) Koelmans (1962) studied chemistry, ecotoxicology and environmental geochemistry at Utrecht University. He received his PhD in Wageningen in 1994. Since 1992 he has published about 170 articles in peer-reviewed journals and he is one of the top ten most cited researchers in Wageningen. A large number of the articles that he wrote or co-authored, often as the promotor of a PhD candidate, received a prize from journal editors or professional associations. Bart Koelmans is a frequently invited speaker at conferences and symposia.
In his research at Wageningen University & Research he has been studying the quality of water and sediment, particularly the implication of plastic particles in the fresh and salt water environment, at both the micro level and the thousand times smaller nano level.
Bart Koelmans acquired the financing for dozens of research projects, which have a wide scale of applications. Some of his projects that have been funded include measuring methods, the behaviour and effects of nano and microplastics in the Netherlands, studying the fundamental processes that explain the effects of plastic on aquatic organisms, the contamination of plastic particles in marine food chains, cleaning sediments in channels or the sustainable management of tropical lakes such as Lake Tana in Africa.
In the research of the Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management group, Professor Koelmans will focus on studying the implications of plastic waste in the environment and in our society and using this information to provide solutions. He will also concentrate on facilitating and connecting the present strong themes in the chair group, such as (tropical) marine ecology and water quality, the theory of complex systems, limnology and the behaviour of the collective, complex, aquatic ecological effects of chemical substances and other stressors against the background of climate change.