Jean Swings studied agricultural engineering at the Catholic

Annuaire de l’Académie Hassan II des Sciences et Techniques
• Jean SWINGS
Professeur à l’Université de Gand (Belgique), Faculté des
Sciences, Directeur du Laboratoire de Microbiologie
Date de naissance : 17 mai 1945
Adresse : Laboratoire de Microbiologie, Université de Gand,
Belgique
Tél. : 32 4 77 61 59 50; 32 9 264 51 04 (secrétaire);
Fax : 32 9 264 50 92
Courrier électronique : [email protected]
Collège : Sciences et Techniques du Vivant.
décembre 2007
Membre correspondant
(nommé en 2006)
Jean Swings studied agricultural engineering at the Catholic University
of Leuven (Belgium) and stayed at the Lovanium University in Kinshasa
(Congo) afterwards, to study the micro-organisms isolated from palm wine.
In 1974 he obtained a PhD in Agricultural Sciences and started his career
at the University of Ghent, at the Laboratory of Microbiology, first as a
Research Assistant, later as Research Director and finally as full Professor
in Microbiology.
The research of Prof. Jean Swings focused on plant pathogenic bacteria,
bacteria involved in biodegradation and aquaculture; the occurrence of
antibiotic resistant bacteria in the environment and in the food chain; on
the taxonomy and phylogeny of prokaryotes, comparative genomics and
data integration.
Besides being full Professor, Prof. J. Swings has been Director of the LMG/
BCCMTM Bacteria Collection for 8 years (1998-2006) and the President of
the World Federation for Culture Collections (WFCC) (2000-2004). Prof.
Swings has been invited to many congresses, symposia and workshops.
He was organiser of several workshops in Morocco e.g. concerning the
management of Biological Resource Centres (BRCs) and on computational
genomics.
Prof. Jean Swings was supervisor of 29 PhD theses, participated in 21 European
Research projects, published more than 280 articles in peer reviewed
journals and was editor of 5 books and co-editor for 3 international
journals. He fulfilled advisory functions in several industries and scientific
organisations, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing, the EU
(Brussels) and the Belgian Science Policy (Brussels).
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