Over the past 14 years, my professional commitments in both empirical research and science in support of policy have allowed me to develop complementary understanding and competences. My focus on soil organic matter (SOM) during my PhD and five postdoctoral positions has developed an in-depth understanding of how SOM contributes to soil-based ecosystem services, how SOM is managed traditionally as well as innovative ways of managing SOM, and what information is needed from a policy-development perspective. I have a proven track record in systematizing research fields of various kinds into new concepts, thereby opening up new research fields for empirical evaluation. For instance, I modified the concept of tolerable soil erosion by integrating the concept of soil functions, as well as the concept of dust deposition into soil formation rates. The article in Earth-Science Reviews has now been cited 332 times. Another example is my 2010 biochar review, published as a EC JRC Scientific & Technical Report (cited 1,036 times in Google Scholar), where I led a team of four postdoctoral researchers into broadening the research field of biochar application with positive, negative and unknown effects, e.g. soil ecotoxicology, soil albedo, plant-available water, soil water repellency, water erosion, wind erosion, etc. My prior and ongoing research has given me mastery over a variety of methods of data collection and analysis, at a variety of scales. In my MSc research, I collected soil water repellency and infiltration data for fertile island vegetation in semi-arid SE Spain (Verheijen and Cammeraat, 2007), cited 40 times. In my PhD research, I applied generalized regression models on a national soil database (Verheijen et al., 2005), cited 28 times). In my first postdoc position, I used representativeness analyses to develop an EU-wide soil monitoring system (Morvan et al., 2008), cited 157 times. In my correspondence in Nature (Verheijen et al., 2015), I contributed to the scientific discourse on international soil policy needs by highlighting the intercontinental transport of soil. In my postdoc position at the EC JRC, I learned and applied meta-analysis techniques in the first global study of biochar and crop yields (Jeffery et al., 2011; cited 1,037 times). In my third and fourth postdoc, I combined laboratory spectroscopic analysis with a first order global energy balance model to assess implications for climate change mitigation of biochar–albedo relationships (verheijen et al., 2013; cited 20 times). My fourth and fifth postdocs (in Portugal) allowed integration of laboratory scale – rainfall simulations (Abrol et al., 2015), ecotoxicology (e.g. Prodana et al. (2019) and field scale (MASCC project) - while continuing continental and global scale research (Verheijen et al., 2017; Jeffery et al., 2017). Currently, I am a Research Scientist funded by the National Science Foundation of Portugal, and an integrated member of CESAM at the University of Aveiro. I have focused my research on SOIL ORGANIC MATTER, how to manage it, and how it interacts with the wider environment. I focus on how SOIL MANAGEMENT can improve ECOSYSTEM SERVICES, in particular elucidating positive as well as negative effects of biochar in soil, and identifying trade-offs in order to build a SUSTAINABLE BIOCHAR system. My work has been cited 2,545 times in SCOPUS, and 5,700 times in Scholar.