Steven Janssens

As an evolutionary botanist situated at Meise Botanic Garden, Steven Janssens has a broad interest in the ecology, evolution and conservation of plants. Since January 2021, Steven Janssens has become associate professor at KU Leuven where he combines a subset of different scientific disciplines ranging from microbiome interactions, biogeography, diversification analyses, population genetics, phylogenetics, species distribution modelling and bioinformatics. In the Crop Wild Relatives research group, fundamental research questions about the origin and evolution of crops and their close relatives are addressed in order to provide valuable insights that can be used at the level of applied research such as crop breeding activities or the selection of disease resistant or drought tolerant species.