Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute

The Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute (WI) is an independent research institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), situated on the campus of the largest university in the Netherlands in Utrecht. The Westerdijk Institute studies fungal biodiversity in the widest sense, focusing on three priority areas, agriculture, human health, and industry (indoor air and food). The institute maintains a large genetic resource of fungi and yeasts, which is exploited by seven research groups: Fungal Natural Products (Jérôme Collemare), Fungal Physiology (Ronald de Vries), Evolutionary Phytopathology (Pedro Crous), Applied and Industrial Mycology (Jos Houbraken), Medical Mycology (Ferry Hagen), Collection (Gerard Verkleij), Yeast and Basidiomycete Research (Teun Boekhout) and Database and Software Development (Vincent Robert).