Hendrik Waegeman obtained a master’s degree in Biochemical Engineering at Ghent University (2007) and holds a PhD in Applied Biological Sciences-Chemical Engineering (2011), also obtained at Ghent University. During his doctoral research he metabolically engineered Esherichia coli to improve recombinant protein production. During his post-doctoral research, Hendrik Waegeman was involved in a number of projects that focused on precision fermentation targeting specialty carbohydrates. He is also one of the founders of the biotech company Inbiose NV, founded in 2013, which develops fermentatively produced human milk oligoscaccharides.  Since 2012, he has a position at the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant in Ghent, Belgium. Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant is globally the largest Pilot- and Demonstration Facility for Industrial Biotechnology. Hendrik is currently Head of Business Operations and responsible for the operational management of BBEPP. Hendrik is also board director of Inbiose NV, Bio.be (the cluster of Belgian biotech companies), Biobased Industries Consortium (BIC, the private partner in the joint undertaking Horizon2020-BBI-JU and HorizonEurope-CBE-JU (Circular Bio-based Europe) and Smart Delta Resources (large energy and resource-intensive companies in the Flemish-Dutch Schelde-Delta region). Hendrik is a strong believer in the bioeconomy and industrial biotechnology. Ref: www.bbeu.org; www.inbiose.com ; https://biconsortium.eu/