Berend Snel studied biology at the university of Utrecht specializing in Theoretical Biology and Bioinformatics. He did his PhD project on comperative genome analysis and genome evolution in the group of Peer Bork at EMBL (Heidelberg, Germany). Subsequently he worked first as a normal post-doc and then as a VENI post-doc in Martijn Huynen’s Comparative Genomics group at the CMBI / NCMLS in Nijmegen, Holland.

In 2006 he moved to the Utrecht University as associate professor. In Utrecht he leads his the Evolutionary Genomics and Integrative Bioinformatics group as part of Theoretical biology and Bioinformatics in the Department of Biology at Utrecht University.

As of June 2014 he was appointed as professor in bioinformatics and chair of the executive board of the Utrecht Bioinformatics Center.

In 2016 Berend Snel was awarded a VICI grant.

Berend has co-authored more than 110 peer reviewed papers which have been cited more than 15.000 times resulting in an H-index of 52.