Prof. Rolf Boelens (1951) studied physical chemistry at the University of Groningen (Netherlands). He completed his Ph.D. in the Department of Biochemistry of the University of Amsterdam with a study on ligand binding and electron transfer in cytochrome c oxidase using EPR. For a postdoc he went to the NMR group of Robert Kaptein in Groningen. In 1987 he moved to Utrecht University and became associate professor in 1990. In 1997 he was appointed full professor of biomolecular NMR spectroscopy at Utrecht University. From 2014-2016 he was head of the Department of Chemistry. Currently he is emeritus professor.

He studied structure and dynamics of proteins and protein complexes, with emphasis on protein-DNA complexes in transcription and DNA repair, and developed methods for biomolecular NMR and computational modeling of biomolecular interactions. His research resulted in over 345 publications (> 18000 citations).

He participated in a number of European projects such as the structural genomics project SPINE2-Complexes, coordinated the NDDP project for modeling protein-drug interactions using NMR data and the Joint Research Activities of the European Research Infrastructure projects EUNMR, EastNMR and BioNMR. He has been co-organizer of the EMBO school on Multidimensional NMR in Structural Biology and coordinated the European Research Infrastructure for NMR, X-rays and EM for Translational Research (iNEXT).