Methods and systems are provided for characterizing interfacial tension (IFT) of reservoir fluids, which involves obtaining fluid property data that represents fluid properties of a reservoir fluid sample measured downhole at reservoir conditions, and inputting the fluid property data to a computational model that determines a value of oil-water IFT of the reservoir fluid sample based on the fluid property data. In embodiments, the fluid property data represents single-phase fluid properties of the reservoir fluid sample, such as fluid density and viscosity of an oil phase of the reservoir fluid sample and fluid density of a water phase of the reservoir fluid sample. In embodiments, the computation model can be based on machine learning or analytics combined with a thermodynamics-based physics model.