Wim van Saarloos is emeritus professor of theoretical physics at Leiden University in the Netherlands. After obtaining his PhD in 1982, he worked at Bell Laboratories in the USA before joining Leiden University in 1991. He received several honors and awards for his research on soft condensed matter and nonequilibrium systems, and was the co-founder and long-time director of the Lorentz Center, an international workshop center.

From 2009-2015 Wim van Saarloos was director of the physics foundation FOM. He returned to Leiden in 2016, while serving first as vice-president and then as president (2018-2020) of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). He presently serves as president of EASAC, the European Academies Science Advisory Council. Previously he was active within EASAC as member and as chair of the Energy Steering panel, and as vice-president.