Jasper's Day
Jasper Knoester is the dean of the Faculty of Science. How is he doing? What kinds of things is he doing and what does his day look like? In each newsletter Jasper gives a peek into his life as dean.
Thursday, 1 February
‘The morning starts off calmly, as my first appointment in Leiden isn't until 10 o'clock. At home, I catch up on my emails and read the newspaper before heading to the train station. At 10 o'clock, I meet Pieter Schipper for a work visit to Naturalis, the biodiversity centre on our campus. We will be guided by Maaike van de Kamp-Romijn, Director Research and Education.
I've been looking forward to this visit. Of course, I've been to this beautiful centre before, for lectures and to visit the well-known museum section. But I've never had the chance to take a look behind the scenes: the enormous natural history collection that Naturalis manages, and the research section. The collection ias one of the largest in the world, with over 43 million objects from nature! It is housed in the tall tower of the centre. It will take years to fully catalog everything that is there.
We visit a huge space filled with marine objects. Row after row of cabinets filled with bottles and containers containing, among other things, a wide variety of sponges, the research specialty of Nicole de Voogd, who is guiding us here. The scale of the total collection becomes immediately apparent. And thus, also the almost impossible task of Naturalis to catalog, manage, and make all of this digitally available to anyone interested. We also visit the wood collection, where Frederic Lens tells us about the research into subtle differences in the structure of different types of wood and its importance for detecting illegal imports.
We also visit the research section of the centre, where we see how automation and digitisation are increasingly contributing to monitoring biodiversity. In the debriefing with Maaike, we conclude that in addition to the existing good contacts with our institutes IBL and CML, there should also be good opportunities for collaborations with the LIACS and perhaps also with the MI. Overall, we see confirmation of the wonderful opportunities for the faculty theme Biodiversity in collaboration with Naturalis.
From Naturalis, we cycle to the Sylvius, where the IBL hosts the monthly informal lunch for scientific directors. We introduced this half a year ago as an agenda-less meeting, where there is room to discuss anything that occupies us at that moment. Today, the conversation is mainly about the position of the beta sciences domain in scientific research and education as a whole.
After lunch, it was time for a reception with a director-general from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy. Unfortunately, that won’t go through, which gives me the opportunity to travel to The Hague earlier, where I have an afternoon meeting of ACCEZ at the Provincial House. The sun has come out, it’s above 10 degrees, much too warm for 1 February, but it gives a nice spring feeling. I arrive early and take a detour to visit my wife Xuefei in her new office. She’s leaving for China tomorrow and is busy arranging the last things. I get a brief tour and then head to the Provincial House, where we discuss ACCEZ’s strategy for the coming years.
The bike ride home takes 2 minutes. After dinner, I swim and watch some sports with Kamiel. From start to finish, it was a very quiet day, which is nice for a change.’