Frederik Tielens

Prof. dr. Frederik Tielens is a Professor of Chemistry and theoretical chemist whose career bridges fundamental research, industry, international academia, and scientific leadership. He graduated in Chemistry from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in 1996 and obtained his PhD in Theoretical Chemistry with cum laude in 2000. His doctoral research on adsorption and catalytic properties of zeolites was awarded the Solvay Prize and the second prize of the international DSM contest.

After a postdoctoral collaboration with ExxonMobil Research, he moved into industry, holding R&D and consultancy positions at Altachem and ABSS. This early exposure to industrial research and applied problem-solving profoundly shaped his scientific approach, strengthening his interest in the interface between fundamental theory, real materials, and practical applications.

In 2003, he returned to academia through a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship at Universitat Jaume I (Spain), followed by a postdoctoral appointment at Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC, Paris; now Sorbonne Université) in collaboration with Yara (Norway). His research during this period focused on the reactivity of metal and metal-oxide catalysts. In 2006, he was appointed chargé d’enseignement contractuel at UPMC, and from 2007 to 2013 he served as Assistant Professor responsible for theoretical chemistry at the Laboratory of Surface Reactivity. In 2013, he joined the Laboratory of Condensed Matter of Paris.

Throughout his career, Frederik Tielens has maintained a strong international profile. He has been a visiting professor in France, Chile, Argentina, and China, and is regularly invited for research visits and seminars worldwide. His scientific work is characterised by the combination of theoretical depth and interdisciplinary openness, particularly in materials modelling, catalysis, and spectroscopy.

Since September 2017, he has been Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he leads the Materials Modeling group, and he was promoted to Full Professor in 2024. In parallel, he holds the rank of Maître de conférences hors classe at Sorbonne Université. Alongside his research activities, he has taken on significant responsibilities in academic teaching and governance, including leadership roles at departmental level.

Beyond his scientific work, Frederik Tielens is also active as an author and scholar in African numismatics and travel writing, reflecting a long-standing engagement with Africa and an interest in history, economy, and cultural context. These activities mirror a broader intellectual curiosity that connects science with society, narrative, and long-term impact.

His research specializes in three families of materials—silica, self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on noble metals, and biological mineralization—with broader expertise in amorphous and porous materials, spectroscopy, heterogeneous catalysis, and adsorption. Methodologically, his group employs periodic and cluster DFT (including hybrid functionals and dispersion corrections), ab initio thermodynamics, and mechanistic modeling of surface reactions at solid–gas and solid–liquid interfaces. He develops and applies spectroscopic property predictions (IR/Raman, NMR) to interpret experiments and to elucidate structure–property relations in disordered systems such as amorphous silica and mesoporous frameworks (e.g., zeolites, MCM-type silicas). On SAMs/noble metals, his work addresses adsorption geometries, electronic structure, and interfacial reactivity relevant to sensing and catalysis. In biological mineralization, he investigates nucleation, growth, and organic–inorganic interfacial chemistry of biominerals (e.g., CaCO₃ and apatites), connecting atomistic models to macroscopic properties. Applications include catalytic conversion on oxides and metals, pollutant binding and adsorption in porous silica, and theory-guided interpretation of advanced spectroscopies in collaboration with experimental partners.

Papers: 190+; Citations: ~5,900.
ORCID: 0000-0002-6760-6176

Researcher ID: E-3176-2010

Check here the website of our Lab:  https://algc.research.vub.be/