Henk Schols started in the late nineteen seventies as technician at the Laboratory of Food Chemistry of Wageningen Universities, headed by prof Walter Pilnik and prof Fons Voragen. He obtained his PhD degree in Food Sciences on ‘Pectin structural elements of fruit and vegetables’ in 1995.
After his PhD, he became associate professor in the same laboratory and in his current position as Personal Professor, still at the Laboratory of Food Chemistry, he continues to be strongly involved in carbohydrate chemistry and –enzymology with emphasis on the structure-function relationship of the various carbohydrates classes. The main area of research has always dealt with fruit, vegetable and cereal cell wall polysaccharides, their chemical fine structure and changes during ripening, storage and processing. During the years, various polymers have been studied in full detail using enzymatic fingerprinting approaches, with also focus on the embedding of plant polysaccharides within the cell wall architecture. His research interest extended toward the characterisation of non-digestible oligosaccharides, human milk oligosaccharides and dietary fibers, monitoring their fate and metabolisation in the human colon and understanding their role in establishing a healthy microbiome and immune system. Next to this, Henk has a strong interest in analytical techniques and strategies for the chromatographic separation and NMR and MS- characterisation of diagnostic oligosaccharides.
Henk Schols (h-index 79) is (co-) author of >400 peer reviewed papers in scientific journals and has been co-organiser of several international courses and symposia in the field of carbohydrates and enzymes.
Dr. Schols has been retired since November 2023, but is still parttime employed by Wageningen University in order to guide his last 6 PhD students to their PhD degree.