Wim van Saarloos is an emeritus professor of theoretical physics at Leiden University in the Netherlands. After obtaining his PhD at Leiden University in 1982, he worked as a member of staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories in the USA before returning to Leiden University in 1991. Van Saarloos 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 in the sciences.

From 2009-2015 Wim van Saarloos was the director of the physics foundation FOM, and at the end of his term led the restructuring of the national science funding agency NWO. Since 2016, van Saarloos has been back at Leiden University, while serving first as vice-president and then as president (2018-2020) of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). Within the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC), he has long been active, initially as member and then chair of the Energy Steering panel, as vice-president, and since 2023 as president.

Wim van Saarloos has served on various high-level groups of the EU, is a member of Academia Europaea, and serves on the Board of Trustees of Sense about Science.