Faculty

 Education:

• Ph.D., University of Ghent, Belgium
  Chemical Engineering

• M.S., University of Ghent, Belgium
  Chemical Engineering

• B.S., University of Ghent, Belgium
  Chemical Engineering

Professional Background:

Marc-Olivier Coppens was a research fellow in the Mathematics and the Chemical Engineering Departments at Yale University (1996-1997), and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley (1997-1998), where he also lectured in Spring 1998. He was an invited lecturer and researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Taiyuan (Shanxi) for the Fall of 1996. He was visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Taiwan in December 1998.

In the Fall of 1998, he joined the Chemical Engineering Department of Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands, first as assistant professor, then associate professor in 1999. Dr. Coppens was appointed Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Professor at Delft University of Technology in December 2001. In March 2003, he became Professor and Chair in Physical Chemistry and Molecular Thermodynamics at TU Delft, before joining the RPI faculty in 2006.

In Spring 2008, Professor Coppens was invited as a Principal Investigator and Guest Professor at the Center for Advanced Studies of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo, Norway. He is a visiting professor at Beijing University of Technology in July-August 2009.

Awards:

• Bronze medal International Mathematics Olympiad (Australia, 1988).
• AIG prize of the University of Ghent (Belgium, 1993).
• Student prize of the Royal Flemish Engineering Society (Belgium, 1994)
• Aspirant of the Fund for Scientific Research - Flanders, Belgium (FWO) (1993-1997).
• Laureate DSM prize (Netherlands, 1996). Postdoctoral Fellow FWO (1997-1998).
• Fellow of the Belgian American Educational Foundation.
• NSF grant for visiting scholarship (1996) and postdoc (1997) at Yale and Berkeley.
• Best paper award from the ASME at the 16th International Conference on Fluidized Bed Combustion (2001).
• "Young Chemist" Award of the Dutch Foundation for Scientific Research (Jonge Chemici NWO) (2001).
• "PIONEER" Award of the Dutch Foundation for Scientific Research (PIONIER NWO) (2002).
• Invited Guest Professor and Principal Investigator, Centre for Advanced Studies of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Oslo, Norway (Spring 2008) for research on the theme of Nature Inspired Chemical Processes.