He had the chance to be among the first Erasmus students in the eighties.
He went to Strasbourg, France, to conduct an undergraduate research project supervised by Jean-Pierre Sauvage and Christiane Dietrich-Buchecker and devoted to the synthesis and photophysical properties of Cu (I) complexes.
After working on polymer tribology for DSM, in the Netherlands, he started doctoral researches on the morphology of polymer blends under the supervision of Georges Geuskens.
Attracted by synthetic polymer chemistry, he went, for a first post-doctoral stay, supported by a Marie-Curie fellowship, and supervised by Klaus Müllen at the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz.