The AI booth at the FTI Closing Festival

Mattijs Baert received the B.S (2017) and M.S. (2018) in Electronics and ICT engineering technology magna cum laude from Ghent University, Belgium. In 2020, he started pursuing his PhD at the Department of Information Technology also at Ghent University. His main research interests are inverse (constrained) reinforcement learning and neural-symbolic AI. Mattijs also teaches various courses in the bachelor of Science in Information Engineering Technology programme.

His expertise can be found in machine learning, deep learning, reinforcement learning, inverse reinforcement learning, neuro-symbolic AI.

Tony Belpaeme is Professor at Ghent University and Professor in Robotics and Cognitive Systems at the University of Plymouth, UK. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). He leads a team studying cognitive robotics and human-robot interaction. He currently coordinates the H2020 L2TOR project, studying how robots can be used to support children with learning a second language, and coordinated the FP7 ALIZ-E project, which studied long-term human-robot interaction and its use in paediatric applications, and worked on the FP7 DREAM project, studying how robot therapy for Autism Spectrum Disorder. Starting from the premise that intelligence is rooted in social interaction, Belpaeme and his research team try to further the science and technology behind artificial intelligence and social human-robot interaction. This results in a spectrum of results, from theoretical insights to practical applications.

Dr. Alexander Botzki is heading the Technology training unit VIB, the Flemish Institute of Biotechnology, Belgium. The main mission of this unit is providing technology training in domains of VIB Technologies, Bioinformatics & AI, Software Development, and Research Data Management. Between2014 and 2022, he was head of the VIB Bioinformatics Core. From September 2009 to July 2014, he was responsible for the roll-out of E-Notebook (electronic lab notebook) to VIB’s researchers within 75 research groups. Before joining VIB, Alexander worked on various computational biology projects for Algonomics (bought by Lonza, 2008/2009) and DevGen (now Syngenta, from 2006-2008). During Alexander’s PostDoc at Sanofi Aventis in Strasbourg, he executed various virtual screening campaigns on the compound collection of the merged enterprise. He received his doctoral degree with the group of Prof. Dr. Armin Buschauer (University of Regensburg, Germany) on ‘Structure-based design of hyaluronidase inhibitors’.

I am Christos Chatzichristos, currently a post-doctoral researcher at KU Leuven. My educational background revolves around electrical and computer engineering, with a specialization in Biomedical Applications and an emphasis on signal processing during both my Master's and Ph.D. studies. During my doctoral journey, I witnessed the profound impact of neural networks on the field of signal processing, marking the inception of my foray into the realm of AI applications. I hold a strong belief in fostering broad interdisciplinary collaborations, as I believe that research today cannot thrive in isolation within a single domain. Artificial intelligence stands as a potent tool to expedite healthcare research. However, to truly harness its potential, we must bridge the gap by facilitating healthcare professionals' understanding of fundamental AI concepts, just as they aid biomedical engineers in unraveling the mysteries of the human body. So, here's to using AI to accelerate healthcare research while ensuring that we all speak the same language – whether it's the language of algorithms or the language of anatomy!

Alexandru Mara is one of the Co-Founders and CEO of Nobl.ai, a tech startup focused on delivering trustworthy AI for the labour market. Simultaneously, Alexandru holds a part-time appointment as a postdoctoral researcher in the Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics group at Ghent University. His research interests revolve around recommender systems and representation learning as well as their applications to the labour market. Over the past decade, Alexandru has built an international academic career in AI and data mining obtaining his PhD from Ghent University in Belgium, MSc from Aalto University in Finland and BSc from the Technical University of Madrid in Spain. He was also part of the ERC projects ONTIC and COGNET focused on AI for telecommunication networks.

Expertise: AI techniques for the job market with particular emphasis on Network representation learning, recommender systems, link prediction, and experimental design and evaluation

Ellen De Geyndt is founder van de UGent spin-off Alfasent. Haar passie voor zowel taal en technologie brachten haar in 2021 naar de onderzoeksgroep LT3 (taaltechnologie) aan de vakgroep Vertalen, Tolken en Communicatie. Tijdens haar onderzoeksproject ontwikkelde ze de AI-modellen die vandaag achter de Alfasent-technologie zitten.

Alfasent biedt software aan die bedrijven helpt om grote hoeveelheden klantenfeedback automatisch te analyseren. Zo kunnen bedrijven snel in kaart brengen waar klanten tevreden over zijn en waar bijgestuurd moet worden

Lisa Hilte is doctor of linguistics. For years, she worked as a linguistic researcher and lecturer at the University of Antwerp. Today, she works for VAIA as an AI expert and liaison for UAntwerp. In addition, she is a freelance writer with a focus on science journalism, and a freelance teacher in AI and language technology. She has published two sets of course materials on language technology, for pupils and teachers in the third grade of secondary education (Plantyn publisher).

Adviseur Citizen Science

Annelies Lejon is currently a postdoc at IDLab (AIRO) - UGent, where she specializes in sign language recognition. She obtained a PhD in applied mathematics from KU Leuven in 2016. Afterwards, she gained experience in a broad range of applications of Artificial Intelligence ranging from anomaly detection, language modelling and speech recognition.

Prof. Pieter Libin graduated in 2014 at Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Informatics and obtained his PhD in Computer Science at VUB in 2020. After his PhD, he held a postdoctoral position funded by the Flemish science foundation at Hasselt university, at the department of data science. Since October 2021, Pieter is active as an assistant professor at the AI lab of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His research involves the use of machine learning to support decision makers by combining machine learning techniques with realistic simulation models and concerns theoretical and applicational AI with a focus on reinforcement learning and Bayesian modeling. He has a broad experience in modeling and analyzing real-world systems ranging from virus diversity, epidemic emergencies, and renewable energy providers. Pieter is a member of the Jonge Academie, an association of young top researchers and artists with an engagement to policy, society, research, and the arts. Pieter is a board member of the Benelux Association for Artificial Intelligence.

Leander Schietgat received his degrees of MSc. in Informatics and Ph.D. in Machine Learning from KU Leuven in 2005 and 2010, respectively. His research interests include machine learning and data mining for life science applications. Since 2018, he is business developer at the Artificial Intelligence Lab of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), responsible for spotting opportunities to apply AI technologies and to set up collaborations with companies and organizations. In 2019, he became research manager in the Flanders AI Research Plan.

My research at the Language & Translation Technology Team research group (UGent) is at the intersection of classical philology on the one hand and the wonderful world of language technology on the other. The quantitative advantage of training high-performance transformer models for the automatic processing of prescribed texts is not on our side. Qualitative data is our absolute basis.

Colin's expertise lies in language technology, ancient language processing, and low-resource languages.

Michiel is a researcher at imec-SMIT-VUB as a member of the Knowledge Center Data & Society (KCDS). He is engaged in different projects related to smart cities, data privacy, artificial intelligence and public outreach.

Medtech Business Strategist