Jan Wouter Vasbinder (1945) is founding president of the Institute Para Limes, which he initiated in 2003. He moved to Singapore in August 2011 to become director of the complexity program at the Nanyang Technological University at Singapore. Vasbinder studied physics at the Technical University of Delft (1972). He started his professional career as a researcher in a nuclear laboratory. Until 1981 he worked in the nuclear industry in Israel and the Netherlands.
His research interests are focused on finding new potentially powerful combinations of knowledge, and developing programs to explore and exploit these combinations. In his career, the common thread is “looking for new combinations and connections, building bridges and coaching.” His motto is: “the value of knowledge is in its application.”