Pieter Van 't Hof

Pieter van ’t Hof has a PhD degree in Plant Biology from the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). He has two MSc degrees in both Ecology, and Plant Biotechnology, from Wageningen University (The Netherlands). He is currently an assistant professor at the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito (Ecuador). Furthermore, he teaches International Education Programs at the GAIAS campus located at the Galapagos Islands. During his PhD, he studied the functional characterization of an important defense protein PR-1, which confers plant resistance against stresses and diseases. In Ecuador, he is developing multidisciplinary research lines that integrate functional macroecology with molecular microbiology, focusing on the microbial ecology of emblematic species in diverse landscapes, such as tomatoes in the center of origin in the Andean highlands, members of the genus Inga in the Amazon rainforest, and beneficial associations of the genus Scalesia with both bacteria and fungi at the Galapagos Islands.