About us

The research group Sustainable Materials Science (SMS) was started by prof. Verbeken when he became research professor (BOF-ZAP) at Ghent University in 2010. His group has steadily grown of the years. In 2018, Kim Verbeken became full professor at Ghent University. The academic staff was expanded with two part-time assistant professors: Inge Bellemans and Tom Depover, in combination with an FWO postdoctoral fellowship. In September 2023, Tom Depover full-time associate professor. The research group is part of the Department of Materials, Textiles and Chemical Engineering (MaTCh) and has a large amount of experimental and characterization facilities at its disposal for both research and service purposes.

The research and provided services focus on three topics:

• the study of the interaction of materials with hydrogen
• the study of degradation of materials by interaction with their environment
• the study of high-temperature metallurgical processes from both a modelling and experimental approach

The research group is involved in several European projects.