Prof. Wieland Meyer - new director of the Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute

Prof. Meyer is an internationally recognised scientist with a long record of accomplishment of over 35 years of research and over 20 years of teaching experience. His research places him at the intersection of medical and environmental mycology – the study of fungi. He studies how fungi can make people and animals sick on a molecular level, but at the same time conducts research into the evolution, genetic properties and epidemiology of fungi.

In his new role, Prof. Meyer will work to strengthen the national and international reputation of the Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute as the authority in all fields of mycology. For example, he wants to manifest the institute as a global centre for biological resources. He sees a leading role for the Westerdijk in determining reference genomes for all fungal species currently stored in the world-renowned collection of the institute to form the basis for phylogenetic studies of the fungal kingdom, clinical diagnosis, understanding pathogenicity and antifungal resistance, product discovery and applications in industry. He also wishes to continue the innovative work underway in the field of database and software development, in order to bundle all possible scientific data associated with the fungal strain stored in the collection and make them available to the widest possible audience. He wants to start collaborations in the field of outreach and education with universities and museums.

After obtaining his PhD at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, Prof. Meyer worked as a researcher in Germany, the United States, Australia, France, and Brazil, where he is still a visiting professor at the Fundación Oswaldo Cruz (FIOCRUZ) in Rio de Janeiro. He held various leading positions in Sydney and currently oversees the research of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Curtin University in Perth. He also leads the global mycological community as the president of the International Mycological Association (IMA).

His research group studies yeasts species within the Cryptococcus neoformans/Cryptococcus gattii species complex, which can cause lung and brain infections in humans and animals. He also heads an antifungal resistance survey of Aspergillus fumigatus strains in twelve Latin American countries. Prof. Meyer already collaborates with researchers from the Westerdijk Institute on projects involving DNA barcoding, a technique that identifies species based on short DNA fragments, for which he set up a global reference database within the International Society of Human and Animal Mycology (ISHAM). These reference sequences form an integral part of the Atlas of Medical Fungi and are used globally as references for molecular clinical diagnosis of mycoses.

Prof. Meyer will start as director of the Westerdijk Institute on 1 July 2023. He succeeds Prof. Pedro Crous, who has led the institute since 2002. Prof. Crous will remain associated with the institute as group leader.

The Westerdijk Institute

The Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute is a research institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences that maintains a world-renowned microbial biological resource centre of living fungi, yeasts and bacteria. It is also a centre of expertise for mycology (the study of fungi and moulds).

The Westerdijk Institute studies fungal biodiversity in the widest possible sense. Its researchers develop and utilise a broad range of techniques for studying fungal biology, ecology, and genetics. The institute’s unique collection of more than 100,000 living strains of fungi puts it at the top of the global list of mycology research institutes. The Westerdijk Institute provides answers to socially relevant questions concerning health, agriculture and industry.