Professor Belgacem received his Engineer diploma in wood science at the Saint Petersburg’s Forest Academy in 1986 (Russia). He then got a PhD in Material Engineering and Science from the Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble, France in 1991. He was then awarded a fellowship from the National Research Council of Canada to carry out a post-doctoral training for two years in Polytechnic School of Montreal (Canada) as a researcher in the field of surface and interface phenomena in cellulose-based composite materials. On his return, he worked in R&D department in industry for 5 years, before moving to University of Beira Interior in Portugal where he spent three years (from 1997 to 2000) as an associate professor. Dr. Belgacem was nominated full professor in 2000 at the Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble, France.

He has published over 250 scientific papers, including 2 books and ~25 book chapters with around 10000 citations (H-Index > 55). Professor Belgacem is one of the three Editors-in-chief of an Elsevier Journal: « Industrial Crops and Products » (ISSN: 0926-6690 http://ees.elsevier.com/indcro/). This task was performed from 2007 to 2020 (institutional web page).