Annuaire de l’Académie Hassan II des Sciences et Techniques décembre 2007 • 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] Membre correspondant Collège : Sciences et Techniques du Vivant. (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). 88.