Mr. V. van der Chijs, President Executive Board
Victor van der Chijs (1960) studied Law in Amsterdam and completed postgraduate education at the Amsterdam School of International Relations and INSEAD. Van der Chijs worked at ING, lastly as Vice President Structured and Project Finance in Hong Kong. In 1998 he started at Schiphol Group, first as Director of Public Affairs, while in later years he became responsible for Schiphol’s activities in the USA. In 2003 he took on responsibility for all of Schiphol’s international activities. A year later he was asked by Rem Koolhaas to take on the management of OMA, wherein recent years Van der Chijs was able to manage the structure, processes and culture of OMA in such a way that he allowed room for the professionalism of the architects, resulting in a newly focused organisation. This development has contributed to OMA’s leading position as a world-class, creative enterprise.
Victor van der Chijs was chairman of the Topteam Creative Industry in the Netherlands, one of the nine top sectors that the Dutch government has set up to strengthen the Dutch economy. In addition he is chairman of the Executive Board of the European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECIU). Van der Chijs can rely on a strong and extensive network, both on a national and an international level.
Prof.dr.IR. a. VELDKAMP (Rector Magnificus)
Tom Veldkamp (1963) is UT’s Rector Magnificus since 27 November 2020. He did his PhD at Wageningen University and Research, in 2002 he was appointed as Professor of Land Dynamics at this university. He was Head of the Landscape Centre at Wageningen, and scientific director of the Centre for Geo-Information and Remote Sensing.
In 2010, Tom Veldkamp was appointed as Rector/Dean of the ITC institute – Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation, as the successor of Prof Martien Molenaar. In his years as a Dean, he led the transformation of ITC - from an independent institute to one of UT’s faculties. ITC has a very good reputation across the world, many of its alumni are at prominent positions in their home country. Tom Veldkamp is a sought-after speaker about different aspects of earth sciences. His scientific work was cited over 21,000 times, and he was the promotor/supervisor of dozens of PhD students. He is, among others, the editor-in-chief of ‘Agriculture Ecosystems and Environment’. Veldkamp was the iniator of many public-private partnerships in education and research, across the world. At the University of Twente, he recently was involved in University College Twente ATLAS and in shaping the new crossdisciplinary programme of Spatial Engineering.
Dr. W.D. Bult-Spiering, Vice-President
Mirjam Bult is the Vice-President of the Executive Board since October 2015.
Mirjam Bult (1971) is an alumna of the University of Twente. After her graduation in Public Administration at the UT, she received her PhD on the topic of public-private partnerships. In addition to her scientific career, Mirjam Bult has extensive experience in the field of higher education. As from 2007 she was Secretary of the 3TU.Federation and therewith responsible for strategy development and coordination of all joint activities in education, research and knowledge transfer.
In 2012 she proceeded her career in business. She was Sector Leader Education & Research at KPMG Management Consultants and a member of the KPMG Public Sector management team.