Broeckhoven, the 2019 winner, received his PhD in 2010 from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), in Brussels, Belgium. Following post-doctoral research at VUB and work as a visiting researcher in the separation processes laboratory at ETH Zurich, in Switzerland, he became a research professor at VUB in 2012. He was subsequently promoted to Assistant Professor and then to his current position as an Associate Professor in 2017. He is also part of the organizing and scientific committee of the biennial HTC (Hyphenated Techniques in Chromatography) conference series and a member of the ChiMiC consortium, which brings together five academic groups in Belgium researching chromatographic techniques.
Important areas of Broeckhoven’s work include theoretical and experimental studies applying the kinetic plot method to gradient chromatography, laying the basis for the application of the method to other LC modalities and toward its use in SFC and GC; developing a novel solution for the effects of viscous heating in ultrahigh-pressure liquid chromatography (UHPLC); the first demonstration of the use of very high operating pressure (up to 2600 bar) in typical column dimensions (2.1 mm ID columns) used in UHPLC instrumentation, and later extending this approach to gradient chromatography; shedding light on the future direction and limits of separations power in liquid chromatography, including the importance of extracolumn band broadening as one of the limiting factors for further improvements in separation speed and efficiency; and revealing the significant effect that turbulent flow in the connection tubing can have on the operating pressure and separation results in supercritical chromatography.
Broeckhoven has published 61 papers, with more than 850 citations, and has an h-index of 19. He has also given more than 40 oral and 52 poster presentations at scientific conferences, one of which received first place in the poster award competition at HPLC 2008 conference in Boston.