Wouter Maes was born in 1978 in Neerpelt, Belgium. He obtained his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from KU Leuven (Belgium) in 2005 under the supervision of Prof. Wim Dehaen, where he worked on the synthesis and application of dendrimers incorporating porphyrins and other heterocyclic building blocks. After that, he worked as a Postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation – Flanders within the same group, focusing mainly on porphyrins and related macrocycles, and (hetera)calixarenes.
In November 2009, he was appointed Assistant Professor at Hasselt University (Belgium), where he was promoted to Associate Professor in 2014, Professor (“Hoogleraar“) in 2018, and Full Professor ("Gewoon Hoogleraar") in 2021. He is the head of the Design & Synthesis of Organic Semiconductors (DSOS) expertise group, which focuses on the synthesis of novel conjugated (polymer) materials for organic electronics and advanced healthcare. He is also the chair of the Chemistry Capacity Group (since 2022) within UHasselt’s Faculty of Sciences, a member of the executive board of IMO-IMOMEC (since 2022), vice chair of the Educational Management Team, and chair of the Examination Committee for the Bachelor's in Chemistry program. Since July 2021, Prof. Maes has also been a Guest Professor (10%) at IMEC, the Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre in Leuven (Belgium).