Louise E.M. Vet

Louise E.M. Vet is a biologist (PhD 1984), former-director (1999-2019) of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), one of the largest institutes of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and emeritus professor in Evolutionary Ecology at Wageningen University. She is an elected member of the KNAW and of the Academia Europaea. Vet is internationally recognized for her research on multitrophic interactions and community functioning and conducted research at the Univ. of Leiden, Wageningen Univ. Univ. of Riverside, California, Simon Fraser Univ. Vancouver, and Univ. of Toronto, Canada.

In addition to her research, Louise Vet actively disseminates the great importance of ecological knowledge for a sustainable economy to politicians, business, government, and the public. She is known as a fervent proponent of nature-based integral sustainability principles (regarding energy, circularity, and biodiversity), which she herself has put into practice when building the prize-winning sustainable NIOO-KNAW laboratory-office complex in Wageningen, for which she received the 2012 Golden Pyramid state prize for excellence in commissioning work in architecture. 

Vet serves on a diversity of national and international boards and committees. Selection: Urgenda; Circle-economy; Commonland; DOB-Ecology; WWF-NL. In addition, Vet initiated and is chairing a broad societal coalition of scientists, nature organizations, farmers, and companies to bend the curve of biodiversity decline (Deltaplan Biodiversiteitsherstel). She provides scientific advice, not only to the Dutch government but also to the European Commission through the European Academies Science Advisory Council.

Vet was awarded several international prizes for her research and knowledge dissemination: e.g. the British Rank Prize in Nutrition, the Honorary Membership of the British Ecological Society and the Honorary Doctorate of the University of Geneva.

In 2018 she was elected number 1 in the Sustainable 100, the annual list of the Netherlands' "greenest thinkers and doers".

Upon her step-down as director of NIOO-KNAW on October 31, 2019 she received the distinction of Knight in the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands, one of the highest royal decorations.