Wim Jansen was born in the Netherlands, and holds degrees in both Geography for Education and Urban Planning. He started his professional career at a Dutch national educational broadcasting company (RVU) where he produced several educational television programme series. After that he joined the Dutch National Institute for Educational Measurement (CITO). In 1986 he was appointed as Educational Technologist at the Dutch Open University and participated in many course teams in the field of Economics, Business studies and Cultural Sciences. He designed and developed several multimedia applications.
In 1991 he moved internally to the research institute of the Open university (OTEC) to do research in the design and development of Multimedia educational software.
Before moving to the European Commission he participated on a part time basis in European projects for the European Association of Distance Learning Universities (EADTU).
Since 1993 he is employed as principal scientific officer in the European Commission. During three consecutive Framework programmes Mr Jansen was involved in the evaluation, negotiation, management, monitoring and assessment of European R&D projects in the field of the use of technologies for Education and Training.
In the beginning of 2003 he moved internally to the unit Research Infrastructure, with a specific assignment to promote, support and stimulate involvement and co-operation between (Social Science) Researchers and (High speed) Network Providers in the emerging European Research Area. He is one of the EC officials responsible for GEANT, the multi gigabit pan-European Research and Education network of networks.