Bert Blocken

Prof. dr. ir. Bert Blocken

Prof. dr. ir. Bert Blocken (*1974, Hasselt, Belgium) holds a PhD in Civil Engineering / Building Physics (thesis focused on CFD & Building Aerodynamics) from KU Leuven in Belgium. He is Full Professor of Mechanical Engineering (Aerodynamics) at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland, the United Kingdom, and part-time Full Professor of Civil Engineering (Building Physics) at KU Leuven in Belgium. His main areas of expertise are urban physics, city and building aerodynamics and sports aerodynamics.

He has published 231 papers in international peer-reviewed journals. His h-index values are 72, 77, 92 on Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar, respectively. He has graduated 32 PhD students. He developed the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in urban physics and sports aerodynamics, called "Sports & Building Aerodynamics" on the Coursera platform. According to the 2016 Academic Ranking of World Universities (Shanghai Ranking) & Elsevier, he was among the 150 most cited researchers world-wide both in the field of Civil Engineering and in the field of Energy Science & Engineering. He is listed as 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics (Web of Science) in the field of Engineering for production of multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in Web of Science Core Collection, ranking him in about the top 0.1% researchers in his field according to Clarivate Analytics (https://hcr.clarivate.com/). He was listed as one of 15 engineers world-wide "who mattered in 2020" by Engineering.com (https://new.engineering.com/story/engineers-who-mattered-in-2020). His first paper on COVID-19, ventilation and fitness centers was ranked by Altmetric in the top 0.003% of tracked articles (www.altmetric.com/top100/2020/).

In the period 2016-2023, he worked with cycling team Jumbo-Visma as aerodynamic advisor and supported them with wind tunnel tests and CFD simulations. This collaboration contributed to 2 Yellow Jerseys in the Tour de France (2022/2023), 4 Red Jerseys in the Vuelta (Tour of Spain: 2019/2020/2021/2023), 1 Pink Jersey in the Giro (Tour of Italy: 2023) and Gold & Silver Medals at the Tokyo Olympics Individual Time Trial. He also worked with Cycling Ireland/Paralympics Ireland, this collaboration also contributed to multiple Olympic Gold & Silver Medals.

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