Mr. Adriaan van der Meer was born in The Netherlands. He studied at the Law Faculty of the State University of Leyden (The Netherlands). At the end of his studies he took an international orientation and continued studying European Integration during a post-graduate course at the College of Europe in Bruges (Belgium). He started his working career at the Ministry of Agriculture in The Netherlands dealing with EU related issues but also with questions regarding the integration of environmental objectives into the national agricultural policy.

He moved to Brussels in 1988 and worked at various internal and external EU policies. He worked both at an administrative and semi-political level inside the Commission.

From 1988 to 1995, Mr van der Meer worked on agricultural matters as Secretary of the Biotechnology Coordination Committee (BCC) of the European Commission.

During the period 1995-1999 he was involved in developing the relations between the EU and the various countries of the New Independent States, especially Russia. Oversight was provided to the Implementation of various partnership and cooperation agreements including the TACIS technical assistance programme dealing with ISTC and the Nuclear Safety programme.

Mr. van der Meer was posted for the first time abroad in 2002 to Cyprus as Head of the Delegation of the European Commission. Subsequently, he worked in the same position as representative of the European Commission to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan from 2005 to 2008 and was among others co-responsible for the implementation of the new strategy of the EU for Central Asia.

Mr van der Meer started his position as Executive Director of the International Science and Technology Center (ISTC) on 1 May 2008.