Prof. Wilco Hazeleger

Wilco Hazeleger serves as Director of the Netherlands eScience Center since 2014, a research center that connects digital technologies with applications in all scientific domains. He has a chair in Climate Dynamics at Wageningen University.

At Wageningen University and Reading University, Wilco studied meteorology. He received his PhD in 1999 in physical oceanography from Utrecht University, after which he went to Columbia University in New York to conduct research on decadal climate variability.

In 2002 Wilco started working at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) on climate dynamics, climate scenarios and the development of global Earth system models. He initiated and led the EC-Earth project, a European Earth system modelling consortium that develops a state-of-the-art Earth system model based on ECMWF's numerical weather prediction model. Until 2014 Wilco led climate research divisions at KNMI. In 2013 he served as Acting Director of a research department on Climate and Seismology Research at KNMI.

Wilco has (co)-authored over 100 refereed publications. He serves on a number of international and national science committees on meteorology, climate and data science, including the SRG of the UK Met Office and the advisory committee of the Swedish eScience Center, and he leads the Big Data national science initiative in the Netherlands.