Joop C. van Lenteren (Netherlands) born in 1945 is Emeritus Professor of Entomology at Wageningen University. He graduated with honours in Ecology and Plant Anatomy from Leiden University and received a Ph.D. from the same university in behavioural and population ecology. He was a postdoctoral associate with Paul DeBach (University of California at Riverside, USA; 1976-1977), senior scientist and full professor of ecology and biological control at Leiden University (1977-1983), professor of entomology and head of department of the Laboratory of Entomology at Wageningen University (1983 – 2003). He was/is visiting professor at universities in Brazil, China, Italy and the USA.
Joop’s scientific work concerns behavioural ecology and population dynamics of parasitoids and predators, and he develops biological and integrated control of pests programmes within sustainable crop production. He is also involved in developing Quality Control Guidelines and Environmental Risk Assessment Methods for biological control agents. He attended and lead many missions in developing countries for FAO, WHO, Worldbank, Ministry of Foreign Affairs to implement, manage and evaluate IPM programmes. He published more than 200 peer reviewed papers, edited several books, served as editor of various ecological and entomological journals, including the Annual Review of Entomology.
Joop has served the International Organization for Biological Control (IOBC) in various functions during the past 40 years. He is a fellow of the Royal Netherlands Society for Sciences and arts, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and Arts and Honorary fellow of the Italian Academy of Entomology and received Doctor Honoris Causa degrees from the Szent Istvan University, Budapest, Hungary and the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Warsaw, Poland.