Jan Wauters is the Science and Technology Counselor health and digital technologies at Flanders Investment & Trade Paris, where he is responsible for stimulating high-tech research collaborations and business opportunities between France/Southern Europe and Flanders, Belgium. Jan has over 25 years of experience in business development for emerging technologies, including semiconductors, renewable energies and biotechnologies.

From 2007-2020, he was Science & Technology Counselor Americas, based in New York.  Prior to this, he was the director of industry relations and corporate marketing at IMEC, the world’s largest independent nanotechnology R&D center. In 2007, he co-founded, together with the US delegation, the Working Party on Nanotechnology at the OECD, to study the impact of nanotechnologies on our industry and society. He served as Executive Director of the Flanders Nano Bio Alliance, which he founded in 2006. In 2023, he co-founded the Flanders Semiconductors association.

Jan Wauters has authored over 100 articles in scientific journals. He published many articles in trade magazines on micro- and nanotechnologies.

Jan received his Masters in physics and Ph.D. in sciences from KU Leuven in 1987 and 1993, respectively. From 1993 to 1995, he was a postdoctoral researcher in Leuven and in the USA. He served as Fellow of the Faculty of Sciences to promote KU Leuven in Belgium and abroad from 2013 to 2019. In 2023, he received his Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Sciences from Open Universiteit.

Currently, Jan serves as President-Emeritus of the KU Leuven Alumni US Chapter.