Dagmar Rafael D’hooge (°1983) is the elected Chair for the Department "Materials, Textiles and Chemical Engineering" hosting > 300 employees.

His research emphasizes on the design of polymerization, polymer processing and polymer recycling. The functional material design and process intensification is performed up to industrial scale, using advanced in-house developed multi-scale modeling tools in combination with experimental validation. He uniquely performs research in chemical engineering, materials science, polymer science, and mechanics/rheology.

He was a postdoctoral researcher in the Matyjaszewski Macromolecular Engineering Group (Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA) in 2011 and in the Macromolecular Architectures Research Team (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany) in 2013. He was a postdoctoral researcher of the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders (FWO Vlaanderen). Since 2017, he is a visiting scientist at Stanford University (Materials Engineering). He is a member of the subcommittee on “Modeling of Polymerization Kinetics and Processes” of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and has been involved in the introduction of new sustainable products through valorization. In 2015, he was an ERC Starting Grant runner-up. He also coordinates the European Centre for Artificial Centre for Artificial Turf in his capacity as member of the Centre for Textile Science and Engineering of Ghent University.

He is currently a coauthor of over 170 peer-reviewed full length research articles, including dissemination in e.g. Nature Materials; Nature Communications; Advanced Functional Materials; Chemical Engineering Journal; Polymer Chemistry; and Macromolecules, 6 book chapters, 1 book (and one more in preparation as leading author), 1 book as first editor, and 3 granted patents.

He teaches polymer engineering courses at the Faculty, covering e.g. polymer reaction engineering, technology, physics and processing.

He is an editorial Board member of the journal Scientific Reports (Nature publishing group) and Polymers, and an advisory Board member of the journal Polymer Chemistry.

He is a co-founder of the spin-off Polinivo, supporting chemical and life sciences industry with expert consultancy services, and advanced synthesis & design tools. Current activities deal with design and support for polymer synthesis, modification and recycling.

He is a co-founder of a second spin-off MakinH, focusing on sustainable product and material design. A key commerical product is the rewetta ball for high quality hockey on non-irrigated fields, saving millions of liters of water per year per field.