Maxim Van de Wynckel

Maxim Van de Wynckel is a Researcher at the Department of Computer Science at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), working within the Web and Information Systems Engineering (WISE) Lab. He successfully defended his PhD thesis titled "Interoperable and Discoverable Indoor Positioning Systems" on June 30, 2025, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Beat Signer. His work focuses on developing frameworks and standards for indoor positioning systems that can interoperate across different technologies and platforms.

Van de Wynckel earned his Bachelor in Applied Computer Science from Erasmushogeschool Brussels in 2016 with great distinction, receiving the award for best thesis of his class. He continued his academic journey at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he obtained his Master of Science in Applied Computer Science in 2019, also with great distinction. His Master's thesis explored Indoor Navigation by Centralized Tracking, which laid the foundation for his PhD research.

Dr. Van de Wynckel's research centers on hybrid and indoor positioning systems, with particular emphasis on interoperability and discoverability of positioning technologies. His work spans low-level and high-level positioning techniques, including SLAM and VSLAM implementations, web-based positioning systems, and artificial intelligence applications for indoor positioning. He has made significant contributions to the field through the development of OpenHPS, an open-source hybrid positioning system framework released in 2020, and SemBeacon, a semantic Bluetooth Low Energy specification released in 2023 that enables semantic description of persons, objects, and environments.

His publication record demonstrates a strong trajectory in positioning systems research, with a focus on creating interoperable, discoverable, and privacy-preserving solutions. Van de Wynckel has developed ontologies like POSO (Positioning System Ontology) and FidMark (Fiducial Marker Ontology) to standardize representations of positioning data and visual markers. His work increasingly incorporates Solid PODs for decentralized, user-controlled location data storage, addressing critical privacy concerns in positioning technologies.

• Best thesis of the class of 2016
• Best final work of 2013

During his academic career, Van de Wynckel served as a teaching assistant for various bachelor and master courses including Web Technologies, Databases, Next Generation User Interfaces, Advanced Topics in Big Data, Information Visualisation, and Open Information Systems. He was also involved in supervising Bachelor and Master theses related to his research domain. His research has been supported through his affiliation with the WISE Lab at VUB, where he has developed multiple open-source frameworks and datasets that have gained recognition in the positioning systems community.

Van de Wynckel is a core contributor to the OpenHPS project, an open-source hybrid positioning system framework that allows developers to create process networks with graph topology to compute the position of persons or assets. The framework supports various positioning methods including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and visual positioning, and is designed to run on servers, mobile applications, and embedded systems. His work with the WISE Lab has resulted in numerous datasets, ontologies, and specifications that advance the field of indoor positioning and location-based services.