5 December 2024

We are very excited to welcome Jeroen Dobbelaere as a guest author for this important blog series on how to make our labs more sustainable. Jeroen is one of the newest members of our Sustainability Committee and he has broad experience in helping academia adapt to the challenges posed by climate change. As the Sustainability Manager at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria and a lecturer at the University of Vienna, he puts into practice many of the sustainability concepts required to decrease the environmental impact of lab-based research. Jeroen is also involved in further spreading awareness on academia’s impact on the environment. He is currently teaching the next generation of scientists how to approach research in an eco-conscious manner.

Over the next months, Jeroen will share his insight and experiences on dealing with environmental issues caused by lab-based research and teach us how to start approaching sustainability from inside the lab.

The Company of Biologists’ Sustainability Initiative (formerly known as the Sustainable Conferencing Initiative) was launched in 2020 to encourage and support sustainable scientific communication. We help the biological community become more sustainable by providing support, financial aid and advice on how to organise conferences in a greener way. We are delighted to extend our support by providing advice on how to make labs more sustainable. Keep an eye out for our first blog, which will be an introduction on how and why academia needs to be more eco-conscious.