Wim De Coen, EUROPEAN CHEMICALS AGENCY (ECHA) Head of Executive Office, Finland
Wim De Coen is head of the Executive Office which supports the (Deputy) Executive Director and directors in governing, managing and monitoring the operations of the European Chemicals Agency. Between 2010 and 2014 he was Head of Unit of Evaluation, responsible in setting up the systems of Dossier and Substance Evaluation and achieving the first 5% compliance check milestone for high tonnage REACH registration dossiers. He started in ECHA in 2008 and gained experience with various REACH processes (e.g. Registration, SVHC). Previously he worked one year in the European Chemical Bureau (DG-JRC) as a part of his sabbatical.
Before joining DG-JRC and ECHA, he was Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) where he was leading a pioneering research group on innovative methods for risk assessment of chemicals. As (co)author he holds over 300 publications in this discipline.
He holds a Masters in Chemistry-Biotechnology, Masters in Environmental Sanitation, a PhD in Applied Biological Sciences (Environmental Technologies) (University Ghent, Belgium) and an Executive MBA from Vlerick Management School, Belgium (University of Leuven & Ghent, Belgium).