Ben van den Brule graduated cum laude as a Mechanical Engineer and obtained a PhD in Applied Physics.
He worked at the Philips Research laboratories from 1982 to 1991 when he joined Shell in Rijswijk.  He worked in the general research group and was part of the team that started Shell Gamechanger.  He was the Burgers Professor as the TU Delft where he held a chair in Rheology between 1995 and 2000.  In 2000 he returned back to Shell full time and joined the management team of Shell’s upstream R&D.  In 2007 he moved to Houston to become the manager of Research and Engineering of the Unconventional Oil directorate.  Currently he is the Vice President for Unconventional Technologies in Shell’s Innovation, Research and Development Organization.