Biography:

I received my undergraduate training at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands. My major subjects there were Plant Nematology, Plant Virology and Horticulture. In 1986 I received my degree (Ingenieur in Plant Pathology).

The next year I left The Netherlands to work as a visiting scientist at the Scottish Crop Research Institute (SCRI) in Dundee, Scotland with a grant from The British Council. At SCRI, I was fortunate to work under the direction of Prof. Derek Brown, who trained me in the area of virus transmission by nematodes. After about a year, I entered the PhD program at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland to study the interactions between stubby root nematode species and different isolates of tobacco rattle virus.

After obtaining my PhD degree, I went back to the Netherlands to work on problems with virus transmitting nematodes in flower bulb crops at the Research Institute for Plant Protection (IPO-DLO) in Wageningen.

I started my current job at the Department of Nematology at UC Riverside in 1995.