Bliek received both his master's and PhD degree from the UT (chemical engineering, from 1976 to 1984) and is at this moment scientific director of two institutes at the University of Amsterdam: the Institute for Technical Chemistry and the Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute for experimental physics. He manages 160 people and has final responsibility over scientific, as well as financial and personnel policy.
Before that Bliek had a career in industrial process development at Philips Electronics and was professor in process technology at the University of Amsterdam. These last few years Bliek was mainly concerned with innovation and technology management and innovative forms of public-private co-operation.
