Steven Driever was a postdoctoral researcher for the RIPE project at the University of Illinois. Today he is an assistant professor of crop physiology at Wageningen University. He is interested in the effects of altered leaf internal structure to facilitate the diffusion of carbon dioxide and improve photosynthesis. For the RIPE project, he assessed the leaf structure, speed of carbon dioxide diffusion, and resulting photosynthesis and growth of plants with a range of different mesophyll cell densities. Steven earned his bachelor's degree in biology and a master's degree in plant physiology at Wageningen University. He went on to earn his doctorate from the University of Essex, where he later studied carbon metabolism as a postdoctoral researcher. He also studied photosynthetic temperature responses as a postdoctoral researcher at Wageningen University. His work is published in many peer-reviewed journals, including Plant, Cell & Environment and the Journal of Experimental Botany.