I am a senior researcher Image Analysis and Machine Vision at the department Greenhouse Technology of Wageningen University and Research Center. In 1985 I obtained a B.Sc. in electronics at the HAN University of Applied Sciences in Arnhem the Netherlands. After working several years in image processing and related topics, in 2004 I got a Ph.D. from Delft University of Technology on spectral imaging for measuring biochemicals in plant material. From 2004 I work at Wageningen University on machine-vision and robotics projects in agriculture.

With protected cultivation and arable farming as main application fields, his research interests include imaging spectroscopy and spectral imaging for disease detection and high throughput automated plant phenotyping. Furthermore I worked on sensor fusion (color, fluorescence and infrared) for monitoring plant health using a robot system, and other projects mainly focused on agricultural research.

I am (co-)author of 3 book chapters and more than 90 papers in peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings.

I’m an active member of WUR’s Vision + Robotics programme which brings together more than 60 WUR experts in machine learning, computer vision, spectral imaging, and robotic systems. We research and develop solutions for the green sector together with industrial and business partners.

We are organizing a Summer School on 'Image Analysis for Plant Phenotyping’ on a yearly basis in Wageningen.

My main research and projects focusses on image processing and machine vision in agriculture.

Current projects:

• Development of a machine vision system for finding the tulip breaking virus in tulips in the open field.
• Development of a multispectral camera and software to detect botrytis in greenhouses.
• Writing ImageJ plugins for several agricultural applications, including phenotyping, aquatic risk assessment and Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) microscopy.
• Development of a large scale phenotyping system for greenhouses.