Dr. Vanden Bout earned his B.S. in Chemistry from Duke University in 1990 doing undergraduate research with Prof. Richard MacPhail. He got a Ph.D in Chemical Physics in 1995 from the University of Texas at Austin under the supervision of Mark Berg. He went on to work as a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in Paul Barbara's laboratory at the University of Minnesota. He started as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin in 1997. He was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 2003 and the rank of full Professor in 2013. He became the associate dean for undergraduate education in the College of Natural Sciences in 2014, senior associate dean in 2018 and dean of the college in 2021.