Frédérique Vanholsbeeck

Frédérique Vanholsbeeck (also Frederique Vanholsbeeck) is a New Zealand physicist, and is a full professor at the University of Auckland, specialising in optics and biophotonics, the physics of light.

Academic career
Vanholsbeeck initially trained as an architect before studying physics. She won the 2001 prize for the best Master's thesis from the Belgian Physical Society. She completed a PhD at the Université libre de Bruxelles, working on non-linear optical phenomena of light. After a year as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Auckland, Vanholsbeek joined the faculty in 2005, rising to full professor in 2023. When she was appointed at Auckland, Vanholsbeeck was the only woman academic in the department. She subsequently promoted the use of new processes for hiring staff, and selecting award recipients and speakers to reduce bias, and chaired the equity committee. As a result of these efforts, the Physics Department was awarded Bronze Level Pleiades certification by the Inclusions, Diversity and Equity in Astronomy initiative of the Astronomical Society of Australia, and has subsequently achieved Silver Level.

Vanholsbeeck's has investigated the use of quantitative fluorescence spectroscopy to monitor bacterial viability and thus the efficiency of antibiotics. She developed the "optrode", a portable, cheap and real time fluorometer for use in food safety.

In April 2023, Vanholsbeeck was appointed as the director of the Dodd-Walls Centre.

Vanholsbeeck is an active mentor of younger physicists. She has advocated for gender and ethnicity quotas in science funding, arguing that they are needed to counter the fact that many people only mentor people who look like them. Such quotas are already in use in Australia, for instance the National Health and Medical Research Council requires half of mid-career and senior investigator grants to be awarded to women and non-binary applicants.

Honours and awards
In 2017 Vanholsbeeck was highly commended for the New Zealand Association of Women in Science Miriam Dell Award. The same year she won the Dean’s Award for Sustained Excellence in Teaching.

She won the inaugural Optical Society of America Diversity and Inclusion Advocacy Recognition award in 2018.

Vanholsbeeck was awarded the New Zealand Association of Scientist's Hill Tinsley Medal 2020.