introduction/brief CV
Prof. Teun Boekhout has been head of the yeast research department of Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute from which he retired April 2022. Since January 2023 he has a distinguished scientist fellowship from King Saud University (KSU), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He is connected to the College of Science of KSU.
He has over 40 years of research experience in taxonomic mycology, especially yeasts. He also worked on medical mycology, host pathogen interactions, and aspects of (functional) ecology.
His main research focuses on the functional diversity of pathogenic yeasts, especially the Cryptococcus neoformans (Cn) species complex and Malassezia spp. Development of rapid and reliable diagnostics tools is an important topic. He was editor of the 5th edition of ‘The Yeasts, a Taxonomic Study’ that was published in 2011. He co-founded The Yeasts Foundation that has as its main aim to realize the electronic successor of the before mentioned monograph, namely theyeasts.org. KSU is co-sponsoring this project.
He published > 600 articles and book chapters, and his work is well cited. His total number of citations is 45,582, and since 2018 22,878. His h-index is 96, and since 2018 66. His i10 index 375, and since 2018 289 (data Google Scholar September 24 2023). One article is cited > 5000x, one > 4000x, one > 1000x, 9 are cited 500-999x.
Expertise:
Basidiomycetes, biodiversity, bioprospecting, biosecurity, Candida, Cryptococcus, ecology, evolution, fungi, identification, Malassezia, (molecular) detection, mushrooms, pathogens, phylogenomics, ultrastructure, virulence, yeasts,
Projects:
With colleagues of KSU and elsewhere he will explore the diversity of yeasts present in insects from the Arabian Peninsula, a hardly studied area with respect to yeast diversity. Many new yeast species await discovery in this region of the world. Next to diversity per sé, functional and applied aspects are considered such as those important for biotechnology and the bioeconomy. In addition, several reviews are foreseen that describe state of the art of mycology, including medical mycology, at the Arabian Peninsula.
In a second project the antimycotic and antibiotic aspects of camel lactoferrin will be studied using yeasts and bacteria as a target. Next to in vitro tests, efficacy tests will be done using mice. In addition, other aspects of camel lactoferrin will be studied, such as interaction with the immune system, cancer cells, and its impact on the animal and human myco- and microbiomes. These studies will be done in close collaboration with scientists from College of Science at KSU, but also others.