Kees de Koning, born and raised on a small farm with cows, pigs, poultry and some horticulture in the south of the Netherlands. After finishing the agricultural university of applied sciences, he started his career in agricultural extension in the ministry of agriculture, later followed by the department of policy making and moved around 1995 to one of the national research institutes and worked mainly in the field of automatic milking. Currently he since 2011 a position as managing director of Dairy Campus, the (inter)national research, innovation and education centre for the Dutch dairy chain, located in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. Dairy Campus is part of Wageningen University & Research, but moreover is also linked with organizations as the Applied university Van Hall Larenstein, vocational education Nordwin College, the national farmers organisation LTO Nederland, national dairy association NZO, FrieslandCampina, RUG Campus Fryslan, city of Leeuwarden and the province of Fryslan.

Dairy Campus is part of the national Agrifood cluster and connected also with other Dutch clusters like Food Valley Wageningen, Water Campus Leeuwarden and the Sino Dutch Dairy Development Center in Beijing - China. Although Dairy Campus focuses on the entire dairy chain from grass to glass, most activities deal with the milk production side of the dairy chain. At Dairy Campus innovative projects and activities are carried out in order to generate new information and knowledge to drive innovation in the dairy chain. In this way Science and practice go hand in hand. Dairy Campus has five main programs: Research, Innovation, Education, Dissemination and Training.

Kees de Koning has over 35 five years of experience in agricultural engineering, milking technology, robotic milking, milk quality, sustainable farm management, smart farming, sensor technology, quality assurance and food technology. He is also member of the Standing Committee on Farm Management from the International Dairy Federation (IDF), manager of the Dutch Test Centre of the International Committee of Animal Recording (ICAR) and chairman of the Steering Committee of the Sino Dutch Dairy Development Centre (SDDDC) in Beijing, China.