Victor Deklerck
Victor Deklerck obtained his PhD in Bioengineering Sciences: Natural Resources at Ghent University, in collaboration with the Museum for Central Africa. He is a research associate at the Plantentuin Meise and scientific director of the World Forest ID not-for-profit organisation. He leads the team in the development of chemical and genetic techniques, combined with geospatial machine learning models, to trace wood and forest risk commodities.
Field of study/sector
- Computer Science & IT
- Agriculture, Nature & the Environment
Organisation
Blog posts
Every tree has a fingerprint: combating illegal timber trade
The trade of illegal timber is growing worldwide: timber with unknown origins increasingly finds its way to the market through shady routes. To combat this, Thomas Mortier (UGent) and Victor Deklerck (World Forest ID, Plantentuin Meise) developed an AI model that can trace the origin of timber via a unique ‘chemical fingerprint’. Their research was recently published in the prestigious journal ‘Nature Plants’.