Frederik Tielens

Prof. dr. Frederik Tielens (°1974) graduated in Chemistry at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (1996) and earned his PhD in Theoretical Chemistry with cum laude at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (2000). His doctoral work 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 to industry (Altachem; ABSS). He reintegrated academia in November 2003, obtaining a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Universitat Jaume I (Spain) and later a postdoctoral position at Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC, Paris; now Sorbonne Université) in collaboration with Yara (Norway), focusing on the reactivity of metal and metal-oxide catalysts. He was appointed chargé d’enseignement contractuel at UPMC in September 2006 and served as Assistant Professor (2007–2013) responsible for theoretical chemistry at the Laboratory of Surface Reactivity. In January 2013 he joined the Laboratory of Condensed Matter of Paris (UPMC). He has been a visiting professor in France, Chile, Argentina, and China, and is regularly invited for research visits and seminars. Since September 2017 he is Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Full Professor since 2024), where he leads the Materials Modeling group, and he holds the rank of Maître de conférences hors classe at Sorbonne Université.

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: 180+; Citations: ~5,800.
ORCID: 0000-0002-6760-6176

ORCID: 0000-0002-6760-6176

Researcher ID: E-3176-2010

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