Johan Hofkens - Biography#

Johan Hofkens studied Chemistry at the KU Leuven (1984-1988), where he also obtained a PhD degree in 1993, for his thesis on "Photoinduced intramolecular charge transfer in donor/acceptor substituted aromatics" (maxima cum laude). Afterwards, he spent 2 years (1994-1995) as a JSPS postdoctoral fellow at the Osaka University, Faculty of Applied Physics in Japan. He then returned to KU Leuven to continue research as a postdoctoral fellow in 1995-1996. In 1997 he stayed for 3 months as a postdoctoral fellow of the FWO (Belgian Science Foundation) at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA. From 1997 to 2002 he continued as a FWO postdoctoral fellow at KU Leuven and started his own research group. He is Professor at KU Leuven since 2002, and was promoted to full professor in 2008. He is co-author of >400 articles in leading chemistry and multidisciplinary journals. His research interests are fast spectroscopy, single molecule spectroscopy & fluorescence microscopy and the development of new microscopy modes as well as applications of these microscopy modalities in nanobiological and (nano)materials research. Current research topics include optical mapping of DNA, luminescent noble metal clusters, perovskites and nanofluidics in optical trapping, among others.