Thomas Pardoen is full professor at the Ecole Polytechnique de Louvain and at the Institute of Mechanics, Materials and Civil Engineering of UCLouvain. He is the Senior Advisor to the President of UCLouvain for corporate relations. Outside UCLouvain, he is the Chair of the Scientific Council of the Belgian Nuclear Research Center SCK CEN, vice chair of the Board of the Von Karman Institute (VKi) and of the Board of the Centre Terre et Pierre (CTP).

He represents Belgium at the Euratom Science and Technical Committee and at the Global Nuclear Forum (NEA/OECD). After graduating as engineer (1994), receiving a master in philosophy (1996) and a PhD (1998) at UCLouvain, and being a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University, he became faculty member in 2000. His research interests span the area of the nano-, micro- and macro- mechanics of materials and systems, with an emphasis on multiscale experimental investigations and modelling of deformation and fracture phenomena, including irradiation effects, from both fundamental and applied perspectives. He has supervised >50 Ph. D. students and > 25 post docs. He has published >250 papers in peer reviewed international journals, with current h factor = 71 and 4 patents.

He received the Grand Prix Alcan of the French academy of sciences in 2011, a Francqui Chair from Université de Liège in 2015 and the Grande Médaille 2023 of SF2M. He has been nominated Euromech Fellow in 2015.