Jack Pronk is professor in Industrial Microbiology and head of the Biotechnology Department at TU Delft. His research is aimed at understanding and improving microbial performance in industrial processes and integrates quantitative physiology, genomics, synthetic biology and evolutionary engineering. Jack (co-)authored 270 scientific publications and is an inventor on 25 patent applications. Results from his team’s research on engineering of yeast for alcoholic fermentation of pentose sugars and for improvement of ethanol yields from first and second generation feedstocks are applied at industrial scale. From 2003-2014, Jack led the Kluyver Centre for Genomics of Industrial Fermentation, a Netherlands-based Centre of Excellence. In 2018 he received the International Metabolic Engineering Award and in 2019 he was awarded a Stevin Prize, the highest distinction for application-inspired research in the Netherlands.