Declercq received his BSc and MSc in physics from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 1996 and 2000, respectively, and received a PhD in engineering physics from Ghent University in 2005. He worked as a Belgian National Science Foundationpostdoctoral fellow with Ghent University before he accepted a faculty position with Georgia Tech in 2006. Declercq received the International Dennis Gabor Award from the NOVOFER Foundation of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on December 21, 2006. He received the ICA Early Career Award "For outstanding contributions to ultrasonics, particularly for studies of propagation and diffraction of acoustic waves" from the International Commission for Acoustics in 2007. Declercq has been president of the steering board of the International Congress on Ultrasonics, as well as president of their 2015 congress. He is an associate editor of the journal Acta Acustica united with Acustica, associate editor of the Journal of Nondestructive Evaluation, and founding editor-in-chief of Elsevier's Physics in Medicine. He serves on technical committees of the French Acoustical Society and is the Chair of the Ultrasonics Technical Committee of the European Acoustics Association.
Connections with the Indian sub-continent
In India, Declercq is a respected scientist. Given his background in astrophysics, acoustics, and acousto-optics, he was honored, in 2019, to inaugurate the Aryabhatt Auditorium. The auditorium is named after Indias mathematician-astronomer Aryabhatt. It belongs to the "Prof. Rajendra Singh Institute of Physical Sciences for Study and Research" at the VBSPU University at Jaunpur, which is named after Rajju Bhaiya, a pupil of Noble prize laureate C.V. Raman. In 2008 Declercq wrote a book on ultrasonics, together with his Indian colleagues P.C. Mishra, Rajendra Kumar Singh, and Sri Singh. In Sri Lanka, a country which he visits regularly, he has family bonds and is a frequently invited speaker at the nation’s institutes of higher education. He is also known for his extensive knowledge of the history of India and Sri Lanka.
Declercq's coat of arms consists of the following elements: Motto: Érudit et sage à pied levé Blazon: on the bordure a compone of 14 pieces gold and azur of which five at the top, an azur shield, having a silver crane with raised foot, membered and beaked in red, holding in the right foot an upright feather in gold, accompanied in chief by two six-pointed stars and at the bottom a sun in gold Crest: A rising silver swan with red beak Origin: The coat of arms contains colours and elements referring to that of Declercq’s ancestors de Patin, with shield placed in front of the original shield of his Spanish paternal ancestors Desclergues. Declercq is a patrilineal descendant of Don Pere Desclergue, who was born early in the 15th century AD at Montblanc in the Conca de Barberà in Catalunya, Spain. Pere Desclergue's grandson Bonaventura Desclergue i Cortés, a notary at Montblanc, had four sons, one of which would stay as heir at Montblanc, while the three others would go to Flanders as military during the Eighty-year war. Don Jeroni Desclergue had been a military since 1587. He stayed in Flanders from 1587-1598 and 1601-1604. In 1587, he became a commander in the infantry company of Lluís de Queralt ; while in Flanders he joined the company of Diego de Durango, in the tercio of Luis del Villar. It has been reported that he was involved in military interventions in Holland, Flanders and France, including the Siege of Cambrai of 1595. On March 10 of 1597 he captured, with his company, the city of Amiens and helped further defending it against the French. On January 14 of 1598 he was recognized for his military career by his captain Diego de Durango. Once returned to Barcelona, he went to the service of the Viceroy Duke of Feria. His stay in Barcelona allowed him to attend, with his father Bonaventura Desclergue and his elder brother Francesc Desclergue, in the :es:Cortes de Barcelona |Cortes of Barcelona of 1599. In 1602 he returned to Flanders in August, where he commanded as Tercio captain of a company of Iñigo de Borja, with which he participated in the Siege of Ostend, where he died, with half of his company, while leading an assault, as a result of the explosion of a mine, on 4 September of 1604, which also wounded his brother Enric Desclergue. Enric was awarded for his military achievements and died in 1631. Antoni appeared in contemporary literature which shows that he went back and forth to Spain, while Jeroni’s grandson, Antoni, was the continuator of the Desclergue bloodline in Flanders through his marriage, in Flanders, with Martina Veracruz in 1656. Bonaventura Desclergues is the one who established the monumental 'Casal dels Desclergue’, or ’la Casa Desclergues’ on the Plaza Mayor of Montblanc; Nico Declercq stems from Jeroni Desclergue twelve generations later.. DNA analysis shows that the Desclergues of Montblanc originate from Bertrand du Guesclin, who was a military commander from Brittany and who supported Henry of Trastámara, the first King of Castile and León in the period 1365-1370.
