Crelan Chair

The Ghent University Crelan Chair helps translate knowledge from applied research projects in agro-innovation into real-life applications. The chair was established at Ghent University in 2015, with support from Crelan cooperative bank.

Sustainable food production

People today are becoming conscious of the fact that, due to population growth and phenomena such as climate change, environmental change, and price volatility, now more than ever, we need sustainable food production now more than ever. And to this end, innovation in the agricultural sector is absolutely essential, both in Flanders as well as internationally.

The Bio-engineering faculty at Ghent University has much to offer in this respect as a leading research institute, as demonstrated by the international university rankings.

This chair is just one initiative that serves to make this knowledge more accessible and available for the sector and to the agricultural supply industry.

Objectives

The objectives of the Crelan Chair for the promotion of sustainable agriculture:

To communicate with agricultural sector stakeholders such as business leaders and policy makers about scientific insights related to agricultural research arising from the joint work of the supervisor and the donor.
To facilitate the transfer of research results from the university to the socio-economic world around us.
To stimulate research into innovative solutions for sustainable agriculture and agro-industry, and to work towards eliminating factors that hinder such innovation.

In this way, innovative academic research can take shape in a proactive and constructive way.

Donor

Crelan NV

Period

2014-present

Supervisor

Professor Guido Van Huylenbroeck

Professor Guido Van Huylenbroeck had a successful career at Ghent University in the Department of Agricultural Economics (LA01) working, successively, as Assistant (1982-1990), e.a. Assistant (1991-1995), Assistant Professor (1995-1997), Associate Professor (1998-2002), Full Professor (2002-2008) and Senior Full Professor (2008-present). He works on agricultural policy and rural environmental economy. From 2008-2015 he was Dean of the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering and, since 1 October 2015, Director of Internationalisation at Ghent University. He was also a member of the Board of the European Association of Agricultural Economics (2008-2015) and the chair of ICA, the European Association of Life Science Institutes (2010-2016). He is currently Chair of the Belgische Vereniging voor Landbouweconomie (Belgian association for agricultural economics).

Links

https://www.ugent.be/bw/nl/onderzoek/ugent-crelanleerstoel (Dutch)