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Dr. Guy Smagghe is senior full professor at the Department of Plants & Crops of the Ghent University in Belgium. He is internationally known for his works and training with insects important in agriculture. As a polymath, he is devoting his career to advancing modern and more green agriculture, sustainability and innovations in crop protection and pollination, for a better society. With his articles ranked in the top-1% for field and year in Web-of-Science, he was also selected as Highly-Cited-Researcher in 2018, 2019 and 2020. This has been possible by his intellectual curiosity and creativity, and passion on the topic regardless of the risks associated with the research topics.
Guy was born in 1968 in Belgium, admiring insects and their metamorphosis already as a child. He received a MSc in Agronomy and Crop Protection in 1991 and his PhD with summa cum laude in Applied Biological Sciences in 1995, at Ghent University. He held different grants, was a visiting postdoc in Spain, Switzerland and USA. He was appointed as research professor in 2002 and became full professor (hoogleraar) in 2012.
Dr. Smagghe took up leadership as coordinator/leader of major research projects. Since 2002, his research has been supported with a total of about 19 M€ from different agencies, federal (BELSPO), regional (FWO, Hercules, IWT/VLAIO, Citizen Science), UGent (Special Research Council, GOA) and Europe (Horizon, Biodiversa, COST). He is coordinator of the EOS-FWO-FNRS project “CLIPS: Climate change and effect on pollination services”.
Dr. Smagghe also takes responsibility in government with respect to pesticides and environmental risk assessment as member of the Belgian Superior Health Council. At university, he is responsible for courses in entomology, animal physiology and behaviour of novel (bio)pesticides. He trained already >2000 (under)graduates. Since 2002, >150 students obtained the MS under his tutorship and he was (co-)supervisor of 66 successfully graduated PhD theses, excluding the 12 that are on-going.
Dr. Smagghe has been distinguished with several prestigious scientific/academic awards. In 1998, the First Prize of the Belgian Royal Academia of Sciences, and in 2007 as Fellow of the Society for In Vitro Biology and in 2016 as Distinguished Scientist, and further, in 2012 as Fellow of American Society for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). As the first (and only so far) Belgian entomologist, in 2017 he was elected as Fellow of Entomological Society of America (ESA, USA), in 2018 as Fellow of Royal Entomological Society (RES, UK), and in 2019, he was honoured as Distinguished Scientist by the International Branch of the ESA. In 2018, he received the Francqui chair as the 1st entomologist in Belgium. For his scientific contributions with insects in agriculture, he received already 4 doctor-honoris-causa degrees in 3 different continents (2011-Africa-Annaba U, 2014-Europe-Tartu U, 2015-Asia-State Azerbaijan Agricultural U, 2019-Europe-U.Madrid). Today he is member-elect of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (KVAB).
