Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Per Halkjær Nielsen is professor at the Department of Chemistry and Bioscience at Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark. He is heading the Centre for Microbial Communities where they study uncultured microorganisms in natural and engineered systems. He has been a pioneer in developing and applying molecular methods and single cell microbiology to elucidating structure and function of microbial communities in wastewater treatment, resource recovery, bioenergy production, and more recently, also in natural ecosystems. He has run several large-scale global investigations of community structure in these systems and has established public resources for the field. He is heading the IWA (International Water Association) BioCluster, coordinating activities between IWA and ISME (International society for microbial ecology) on water engineering and microbial ecology. He is fellow of the Danish Academy of Technical Science and has got several prestigious awards, including the title Knight of Dannebrog.
