Bart Van der Bruggen (; born 14 October 1972) is a Belgian academic and researcher in the field of membrane science. He has been at KU Leuven since 2004, and serves as a full professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at KU Leuven since October 2009. He also has been serving as an extraordinary professor at Tshwane University of Technology (Pretoria, South Africa) since 2014, and at the Technical University of Ostrava (Czech Republic) since 2025.
Early life and education.
Bart Van der Bruggen was born on born 14 October 1972. He received a degree in chemical engineering, equivalent to a Master in Engineering Science at KU Leuven in 1995, and a title of Doctor in Applied Science, Chemical Engineering, from KU Leuven in 2000. His dissertation was on "Removal of organic molecules from aqueous solution by nanofiltration".
After his PhD, he was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship by the FWO-Vlaanderen (Fund for Scientific Research-Flanders), during which he was a visiting scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Istituto per la Tecnologia delle Membrane (ITM-CNR, Cosenza, Italy) where he worked with prof. Enrico Drioli.
Career.
Van der Bruggen began his academic career at KU Leuven, where he held various teaching and research positions. From 2002 to 2004, he served as a part-time Lecturer, followed by a role as a Lecturer from 2004 to 2006, and later as a Senior Lecturer from 2006 to 2009. In October 2013, he was promoted to Full Professor at KU Leuven.
He was a Visiting Researcher at Università della Calabria and ITM-CNR, Italy (March–April 2005) and at Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT), Finland (July–August 2007). He held visiting professorships at Universidad de Cantabria, Spain and Université de Rennes 1, France (2010), and Dalian University of Technology, China (2013–2014).
Van der Bruggen served in the Council of the European Membrane Society (EMS) from 2007 to 2011, and was  Vice-President (2009–2011); in a second term from 2013 to 2017, he was President of the EMS. He served as the Founding President of World Association of Membrane Societies (WA-MS), for which WA-MS from 2017 to 2020.
Achievements.
Van der Bruggen has more than 750 international peer-reviewed publications, with more than 65,000 citations, and h index of 126. He has had editorial functions; he started working with Wiley as editor of Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology, later he accepted a role as Executive Editor. In 2009 he worked as editor for Separation and Purification Technology, being Editor-in-Chief since 2015. He is also a member of the Editorial Board of several other scientific journals related to membrane science and technology, polymer science and environmental sciences, such as Journal of Membrane Science, Journal of Applied Polymer Science, and Process Safety and Environmental Protection.