His research work has been published in more than 500 peer-reviewed journals. He (co-)authored 8 papers that were listed in the top-100 most cited papers in the Journal of Dental Research, including the 5th highest cited paper and 4 papers in the top-100 most cited dentistry overall papers, including the 22nd highest cited paper. He has served as promoter/co-promoter of 14/4 PhDs (+ 5/2 ongoing). He has been honoured with several awards such as the 1996 triennial Robert Stock Award for best PhD dissertation in Biomedical Sciences, the 1997 Albert Joachim Award, the 1998 Biomedical Sciences Award of the Research Council of KU Leuven, the 2000 IADR Young Investigator Award, the 2003 Academy of Operative Dentistry Buonocore Memorial Lecturer, the 2008 CED-IADR (Continental European Division of IADR) Robert Frank Lecturer, the 2014 IADR/AADR William J. Gies Award for the best 2014 JDR paper in the Biomaterials & Bioengineering Research category, the 2015 IADR Wilmer Souder Award (IADR Distinguished Scientist award for Dental Materials), the 2020 EFCD (European Federation of Conservative Dentistry) Award of Excellence and the 2022 IADR Distinguished Service Award. Since 2003, he has been appointed as holder of the Toshio Nakao Chair for Adhesive Dentistry. He was President of the Pan-European Federation of IADR in 2006-2007 and served as Secretary of CED-IADR for 12 years (2009-2021). In September 2019 (Madrid), he was elected as President Elect of CED-IADR, and became CED-IADR president in September 2020 and organized the 2021 CED-IADR/NOF Oral Health congress in Brussels, and finally retired from the CED-IADR board as Past-President in September 2022. Since 2004, he is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Adhesive Dentistry.