Rob van Haren is Professor “Transition Bioeconomy” at the Institute for life Sciences and Technology of the Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen. His chair has three transition themes: transition green entrepreneurship, transition green process technology, product development with green ingredients. Green process technology is with supercritical CO2 technologies for extraction and fractionation respectively. Rob van Haren combines these three themes within “green circular new product development”.

Rob van Haren was interim Professor Art&Sustainability at Minerva Art Academy. There his artistic research is focused on "Fair circular Transition" with the research lines: "Transformative change by Panarchy" and "Circular Biobased Design".

Rob has a doctorate in theoretical biology at the VU University Amsterdam. In addition to his professorship he guides SMEs to 'private label innovations' and develops new food- and lifestyle products. Rob was previously employed as director of Kiemkracht, an alliance of Agriculture and the InnovationNetwork of the Ministry of Economic Affairs. In addition, he was professor of Innovation and Knowledge transfer Agribusiness at the University of Groningen. Before he worked as innovation manager sustainable supply chains at AVEBE, a Dutch potato processing industry and as senior scientist agro-ecology at Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR).