Biography

Jan-Willem Veening obtained his Ph.D. in molecular genetics from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and received postdoctoral training at the Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology, Newcastle University, UK. In 2009, he established his lab at the Groningen Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology Institute. In 2016 he moved to the University of Lausanne as full professor at the Department of Fundamental Microbiology as head of the Laboratory of Systems and Synthetic Microbiology. He was visiting scholar at UC San Diego in 2023 and since September 2023 is the director of the Department of Fundamental Microbiology in Lausanne. The Veening lab uses systems and synthetic biology approaches to study chromosome segregation, mechanisms of antibiotic resistance development, and gene expression in important opportunistic human pathogens such as Streptococcus pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus and Group A Streptococcus.

Veening published >120 papers in well-known journals including Cell, Cell Host & Microbe, PNAS, Science and Nature Microbiology. He received several prestigious grants (e.g. Veni, Vidi, ERC StG, ERC CoG), became EMBO Young Investigator in 2014, joined the Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015 and was elected fellow of the European Academy of Microbiology in 2024. Findings from the lab have been patented and led to the foundation of i-Seq Biotechnology in 2024 to advance novel, broad-spectrum, vaccines and therapeutics, on which Veening serves as chair of its scientific advisory board.