Organisation: Ghent University is located in Belgium, the heart of Europe, and was founded in 1817. The university offers high quality, research-based education in a wide range of academic disciplines, spread over 11 faculties. Today Ghent University attracts over 30,000 students, with a foreign student population of over 1,100 EU citizens and some 1,000 students from non-EU countries. With a view to cooperation in research and scientific service, numerous top-level research groups, centres and institutes have been founded over the years. Several of them are renowned worldwide, in various scientific disciplines such as biotechnology, aquaculture, microelectronics and psychology. Ghent University is recognized as one of the fastest growing universities in Western Europe. For example, in 2008, Ghent University published about 3,500 research papers in the Web of Science, a 200 % increase in ten years’ time. Ghent University invests an annual amount of more than 175 million euro in research projects on behalf of public and private partners and appoints about 4,700 scientific staff members. It has participated in around 200 research projects in the Sixth Framework Programme (2002-2006) and so far in 90 in FP7. The university provides excellent training opportunities to young researchers through its five Doctoral Schools and awards around 400 Ph.D. degrees per year, of which over 20 % go to international young researchers. The Department of Forest and Water Management at Ghent University carries out state-of-the-art scientific research with respect to the sustainable management of water and forest resources. As part of this department, the mission of the Laboratory of Forestry is to further the understanding of the structure and functioning of forest ecosystems. A process-based understanding of the dynamics of these systems should provide the basis for improving their management in an era of multiple and sometimes conflicting forest uses.
More information: http://www.UGent.be/
