Professor van Santen received his Ph.D. in 1971 in Theoretical Chemistry from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands . In the period 1972-1988 he worked for Shell Research in Amsterdam and Houston.

In 1988 the became full Professor of Catalysis at the Technical University Eindhoven.

From 2010 till now he is Emeritus Professor and Honorary Institute Professor at Technical University Eindhoven . He is a member Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and Arts and foreign associate of the United States National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

He has received several prestigeous awards. Amongst others, the 1981 golden medal of the Royal Dutch Chemical Society, in 1992 the F.G. Chiapetta award of the North American Catalysis Society, in 1997 the Spinoza Award from the Dutch Foundation for Pure and Applied Research and in 2001 the Alwin Mittasch Medal Dechema, Germany.

His main present research interests are computational heterogeneous catalysis and complex chemical systems theory. He has published over 700 papers, 16 books and 22 patents.