Poolman has received numerous awards, including the Biochemistry Award (1989) of the Dutch Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Organisation (NVBMB), a Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences fellowship (1989), a Human Frontiers Science Program Organization award (1992), the SON ‘Jonge Chemici’ award (1997), the Federation European Biochemical Society Lecturer Award (2014), and the Joel Mandelstam Memorial Lecture award (2016).
He obtained four TOP program grants from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)(2001, 2007, 2010, 2014)., two program grants from the Netherlands Proteomics Centre (2005 en 2008), and coordinated three large European networks (1996, 1999 and 2012). In 2015 he received an ERC Advanced Grant and in 2019 an ERC Proof-of-Concept Grant, and in 2017 the BaSyC consortium (with Poolman as one of the lead principal investigators) was awarded a multimillion Dutch Gravitation grant.