Kees van de Hondel, since August 2006 lecturer in Industrial Microbiology at HAN University of Applied Sciences and also Professor at the University of Leiden, received on March 31 during his official farewell to his academic career the Royal award "Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau". Van den Hondel received this award from the Mayor of Noordwijkerhout during the European Conference on Fungal Genetics there, which he organized in cooperation with the HAN BioCentre and the University of Leiden.

Kees van den Hondel has been influential in research of fungi. Biotechnology companies such as DSM use fungi to produce enzymes and other quality products. It is particularly in this field Kees van den Hondel has been at the top of the international research. The ultimate goal of this research is to understand how this enzyme production is done so that this knowledge can then be used to improve existing and developing new production processes.

A very different aspect of his work is that many species of fungi belong to the serious pathogens of plant diseases or are notorious food pathogen. Worldwide damage caused by the fungi to foods amounts to more than 100 billion U.S. dollars each year.
In addition, the means to combat fungi efficiently without endangering public health are limited. This area has the attention of Kees van den Hondel. With Hitexacoat B.V., a biotechnology company created for that purpose, he investigates new control options. He focuses on taking natural substances that are simple and inexpensive to make, so they are accessible to the economically weaker countries in the developing world.
After his retirement Kees will remain active as CEO Hitexacoat and will also continue education activities with both the University of Leiden and HAN university of Applied Sciences in Nijmegen.

NBV werkt samen met het BCF event dat op 20 mei 2010 in de RAI in Amsterdam

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