Olivier De Clerck is a phycologist. His research focuses on genetics, diversity and distributions of marine macroalgae. A substantial part of his research involves culturing seaweed strains to study development, morphogenesis and reproduction of various seaweed species. In many cases such experiments are linked to genetic/genomic studies. The latter research bridges his academic interests with applied phycology aimed at cultivating seaweeds (strain selection and ecophysiology) and developing a European seaweed aquaculture sector. He currently supervises a team of five senior researchers, eight doctoral students and three technicians. According to Google Scholar, he has (co)authored more than 250 papers in peer reviewed journals, with >13.800 citations and an h-index of 56. Olivier is a member of the steering group of the European Marine Biological Research Centre (EMBRC) and president of the International Phycological Society. He coordinated the Ulva genome project in collaboration with several European research institutes and acted as group or work package leader in several European research projects (COST Phycomorph and Seawheat, Horizon Europe United, Ultfarms, Algae Pro Banos and iCulture).