Lennart Hoengenaert

Lennart embarked his academic journey at Ghent University in Belgium, where he studied Biochemistry and Biotechnology. During his masters, he seized the opportunity to broaden his horizons through an Erasmus Exchange at Umeå Plant Science Centre in Sweden, where he studied microtubular development under the guidance of Prof. Edouard Pesquet.
Driven by his passion for science, Lennart pursued a PhD in the group of Prof. Wout Boerjan at the VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology. Here, he focused on understanding secondary cell wall formation in plants with the aim of optimizing lignocellulosic biomass for the biorefinery.
Upon graduating in 2021, Lennart continued as a postdoc and shifted his focus to gene editing and plant transformation to develop novel tools that allow Cas-free gene-editing in trees.