Curriculum vitae Robert Verpoorte
Natural Products Laboratory, Institute Biology Leiden, Leiden University (PO Box 9502, 2300 RA, Leiden, The Netherlands, tel. +31 +71 5274528, fax 5274511, Email
[email protected])
He holds a Pharmacists degree (1972) from Leiden University, and he passed his PhD at the same university on a thesis on pharmacologically active compounds from Strychnos species (1976). He was lecturer at Leiden University 1976-1987, and became professor and head of the department of Pharmacognosy in 1987. He was guest professor in London (UK), Uppsala (Sweden), Amiens (France), Reims (France), Hilo (US) and Seoul (Korea). From 1992-1998 he was Vice-Chairman and Chairman of the committee of the Phytochemical Society of Europe. Since May 2011 he is professor Emeritus at Leiden University and member of the Natural Products Laboratory.
He is author/co-author of 820+ scientific papers, 4 books and 6 patent applications and was Editor of Journal of Ethnopharmacology (1996-2002), Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Ethnopharmacology (IF2021, 5.09)(2003-2016) and is Editor-in-Chief of Phytochemical Reviews (IF2021, 7.741) since 2001 and Executive editor Biotechnology Letters (IF2021, 2.716) since 2006. He serves on the editorial board of a number of journals. He supervised 70 PhD-theses, and 150+ MSc theses.
He received an Honorary Doctorate University of Amiens, France (2004) and of the University of Uppsala, Sweden (2012). In 2007 he received the Phytochemical Society of Europe Medal. He is a Honorary Professor at the Hong Kong Baptist University.In 2015 he was awarded the Gusi Peace Prize in Manila, The Philippines. September 2017 he was awarded the Egon Stahl Medal in Gold by the International Society of Medicinal Plants and Natural Products Research for his lifetime scientific work. In 2017 he was awarded the Qihuang International Prize of the China Association of Chinese Medicine (China). In the academic year 2023-2024 he held the "Chaire Collen-Francqui International." at the Faculty of Pharmacy at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (June 2024).
He is among the 1% Highly Cited Researchers 2018, 2019, 2020, 2o21 (Cross-Field)(Web of Science, Clarivate Analytics).
He is among the 2% top scientists in the world in a recent Stanford study (2020), ranking on position 45 in the field of Chemistry (out of 134,814).
Current research interests
- Isolation of new biological active compounds (medicines, biopesticides) from plants or plant cell cultures.
- Centrifugal partitioning chromatography as a preseparation method in screening for new biological active compounds.
- Studies on Cannabis, including biosynthesis and metabolomics of this plant in connection with medicinal applications.
- Metabolomics as a tool to determine the functions of genes, to do quality control of medicinal plants and in dereplication in natural products lead finding.
- Natural ionic liquids and deep eutectic solvents (NADES): biological implications and applications.
- Plant cell biotechnology: in particular production of fine chemicals (in¬cluding drugs) by means of plant cell cultures.
- Biosynthesis of secondary metabolites in plants, mapping of pathways
- NMR-based metabolomics of plants.
- Genetic engineering of plant secondary metabolism (metabolic engineering).
- Studying plant resistance against pests and diseases using metabolomics in a systems biology approach.
