Arian Steenbruggen: "New NWO: flexible, agile and focused on cooperation"
With effect from 1 January 2017, Arian Steenbruggen is the director of the new NWO domain Sciences. "I want to make my contribution to the success of the new design of NWO, by enhancing the collaboration between the science areas of NWO. As one NWO we will be more flexible, agile and focused on cooperation. This also means that NWO will become more effective, respond more flexibly to developments in science and society."
Arian Steenbruggen (1969) is hardly an unfamiliar face at NWO. Between 1997 and 2004 she worked within the Earth and Life Sciences Division as a senior policy officer. She then transferred to Utrecht University where she was first managing director of the Darwin Centre for Biogeology and later head of research of the Faculty of Geosciences.
Since 2009 she was the head of the Soil Science Centre, at that time one of the five centres of the ESG. Since 2012 she has been head of the Department of Environmental Sciences at the Environmental Science Group (ESG) of Wageningen UR.
After her degrees in environmental sciences, geology and geochemistry she gained her doctorate from the Faculty of Geosciences at Utrecht University for her thesis entitled 'Properties and applications of zeolitized fly ash'.
In addition to this she is active as a role model for VHTO, the Dutch National Expert Organisation on Girls/Women and Science/Technology, which seeks to increase the participation of girls and women in science technology and ICT.