Born in a small, nature rich village close to Leuven, my student time was determined quite easily. Primary school under the church tower of Heverlee (Leuven), Secondary school on the “The Old Market Square” (known as: ’The greatest bar of Western Europe’) and university at the K.U.Leuven at the Faculty of Bioscience-engineering located on the Arenberg campus.
After living in such ‘small’ world I took the chance to do the fieldwork of my Msc thesis (gully erosion) in Tanzania. After graduating I spend an extra year in Tanzania, working on an oil palm project. During that year I wrote a PhD research proposal on Jatropha biodiesel, I searched promoters at my home university and at foreign institutes who were willing to support this research and I applied for a scholarship.
Now, two years later, I find myself performing a PhD in New Delhi, India (Collaboration between Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and the World Agroforestry Centre) and am I entering my first post on this Nature Network Blog. Looking at biofuels I guess I will try to blog on new insights or discussion points of biofuels’ sustainability, but also random reflections on everyday life of a PhD student, abroad in New Delhi, or at home in Leuven, are likely to be shared.
Wouter Achten
Division Forest, Nature and Landscape
It’s great to have you writing form New Delhi – I am looking forward to your contributions!
(I have added a nifty Nature Network button to your network list on your Forecoman profile.)
Yes, welcome onboard Wouter. Looking forward to hearing more about biofuels.
Welcome from me, too. Looking forward to reading your posts, Wouter, which sound as if they will be very interesting.
You might want to check out Nature India, which as well as being a free resource in itself for Indian news, views, research, etc, also has an associated blog (Indigenous) and a Nature Network group (Nature India).
I’m looking forward to seeing what you write!
I’m trying to remember if I went to The greatest bar of Western Europe when I visited Leuven, and I can’t remember. This rather suggests I have.
Thank you all for the welcome!
At the moment I’m in Nepal and have low internet access, which slows down the reactions…
@Raf: Nifty indeed
@Maxine: thanks for the links
Bob: to bring back your memory, this is the place (on the left: bars; on the right: main building of K.U.Leuven university, and bars; at the back: kebab shops):
(From FlickR)
Welcome on Nature Network! It sounds like you’re going to have interesting things to blog about: Biofuels, India… (I don’t personally find Belgium very exotic, coming from Holland, but I’ve never actually been to Leuven, so maybe I can learn something new after all.)
A belated welcome to the NN blogs Wouter. Besides my interest in biofuels, I’ll be interested to hear how you ended up New Delhi and how your PhD progresses. Best of luck!