Carlo Heip new NIOZ director

22 September 2006

New NIOZ director enhances cooperation in fundamental sea research

Prof. Dr. Carlo Heip will become the new general director of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research NIOZ. NIOZ is part of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research NWO. Heip will combine this new job with his current position as director of the Centre for Estuarine and Marine Ecology CEME of the NIOO-KNAW Netherlands Institute of Ecology in Yerseke. This institute is located in the Delta-region in the south-west of the country. The combination of both jobs will allow him to enhance the cooperation between both major Dutch marine institutes upon which their boards have recently agreed. This should aid both institutes to strengthen their international top position in fundamental and strategic marine sciences.

Prof. Dr. Carlo Heip, from 1 October 2006 new general director of NIOZ

Prof. Dr. Carlo Heip, from 1 October 2006 new general director of NIOZ.

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Carlo Heip (1945) has a high international reputation as a marine biologist and as manager. He is the author of more than a hundred publications in scientific journals and editor of eleven scientific journals. He is also a professor at the universities of Groningen and Gent. His areas of expertise are the ecology of benthic organisms and the global issue of maintaining and strengthening the biodiversity of seas and oceans.

As a science manager, Heip has led over forty fundamental and applied research projects in the Netherlands and Belgium. He was coordinator of seven large projects of the European Union. He is currently in charge of the European Excellency Network ‘Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystems Functioning’ (MarBEF), in which both NIOZ and NIOO are participating. Heip is director of NIOO-CEME since 1992. From 1987 to 1992 he was already the director of CEME’s predecessor, the Delta Institute for Hydrobiological Research.

Carlo Heip will start at NIOZ on 1 October. NIOZ is the oceanographic institute of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research NWO. The Netherlands institute of Ecology NIOO, of which CEME is the marine part, is the largest institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). NIOZ is a broad oceanographic institute with physical oceanography, chemistry, biology and geology as the four equal pillars of marine sciences. At NIOO, ecology is the leading field in its terrestrial, limnological and marine branches, whereas the other disciplines should have a supportive role. Quite a number of scientists of NIOZ and NIOO already join forces for many years, e.g. in ecology of coastal regions, microbiology and biogeochemistry. Recently, both institutes have decided to make this official in an agreement named ‘the Netherlands Combination for Fundamental Research for Coast and Sea (FOKUZ)’.

Scientific Strategy
As NIOZ general director, Professor Heip will strive to maintain and where possible improve the international position of the institute. With a clear strategy and more (national) structure he feels confident about achieving these goals. Except from FOKUZ he also expects a lot from cooperation agreements with other partners, such as the Dutch universities, industry and other new Dutch institutes of Wageningen IMARES and the Delta Institute. (Note: this is a new institute, which bears no relation to the old Delta Institute of which Heip was director until 1992) .

Professor Heip also wants to make a career in marine sciences more attractive to young scientists. ‘We should improve the communication on the importance of our research to local and national authorities as well as to the general public’, he says. ‘We should also increase our presence on a European and on an intercontinental scale, in concordance with the nature of the oceans. I also hope that we can play a more important role in the education of young people, especially from developing countries. That’s really necessary for a healthy development of our coastal seas and our oceans on the longer term. And, don’t forget, more thant two-thirds of the surface of our planet consists of seawater’.

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