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Ferry Hagen. Photo: Kirsten van Santen

The research of Ferry Hagen focuses on the characteristics of major pathogenic fungi. Pathogenic fungi are disease causative agents of animals (including humans) and plants. His research aim is to further unravel the epidemiology and population dynamics of human fungal pathogens, investigate antifungal resistance patterns and improve fungal diagnostics and antifungal treatment.

The Westerdijk Institute and the UvA Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED) have a long tradition of shared mycological research. Since the instigation of the first Mycology chair in 1991, but especially after 1999, the main direction of research has shifted from classical taxonomy-based studies towards molecular, evolutionary‐phylogenetic, genomic, and genetic ecological approaches. By means of the Fungal Functional Diversity chair, IBED and the Westerdijk Institute form a natural coalition to continue the work of unravelling the role of fungal biodiversity in ecosystem functioning and human well-being, under the influence of natural processes, climate change and other human-stressors.

As professor by special appointment Hagen will study the diversity of the fungal kingdom in relation to their functions to improve our understanding of their role in ecosystems under the influence of major global changes on both the ecological and society level, and what primes fungi to shift from the free‐living to the disease causing state.

Hagen will also contribute to education at the UvA by sharing his expertise on the diversity and functioning of fungi within the BSc programmes Biology, Biomedical Sciences and Future Planet Studies, as well as the MSc programmes Biological Sciences and Forensic Sciences. He will also support individual student research projects at both BSc and MSc levels, and will be involved in doctoral programmes in the field of Fungal Functional Diversity.

About Ferry Hagen

Ferry Hagen is a group leader at the Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute (WI-KNAW). After receiving his PhD from the Utrecht University with a thesis entitled ‘Cryptococcus gattii and Cryptococcus neoformans – Cosmopolitans on the move’, Hagen worked as (medical) molecular microbiologist at CWZ Canisius-Wilhelmina Hospital in Nijmegen. In 2017, he returned to the Westerdijk Institute where he is heading the research group Medical Mycology. Since 2019 he is also visiting professor at the Laboratory of Medical Mycology at Jining No. 1 People's Hospital in China.