Rob van Beers is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, with affiliations to Neurocontrol, IBBA, and AMS - Sports. His research focuses on human motor control, spatial perception, and computational modeling using Bayesian approaches to understand sensory-motor integration under uncertainty. He holds ancillary roles as a Researcher at Radboud University (Nijmegen) since 2015 and serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Neurophysiology since 2015. His work contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goals related to health and well-being. Key research interests include motor learning dynamics, sensorimotor adaptation, and the neural basis of spatial orientation. Recent studies explore Alzheimer’s impacts on motor adaptation and Bayesian inference in vestibular path integration. Teaching responsibilities include courses on linear systems dynamics, physical measurement techniques, and motor systems regulation. His work spans 42 peer-reviewed articles, with datasets published on platforms like Dryad and Zenodo.
A. Asadi is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science at TU Delft. He leads the Wireless Communication and Sensing (WISE) Lab within the Embedded Systems Group, focusing on the integration of wireless communication and sensing systems for Beyond-5G and 6G networks. His research leverages machine learning to develop practical solutions for next-generation wireless networks, with strong industrial collaborations from companies such as Nokia, NEC, and National Instruments. Research Themes : Wireless Sensing, 6G Networks, Physical Layer Security, Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS), mmWave Communication Key Collaborations : Industry partnerships with Nokia, National Instruments, and NEC Recent research outputs highlight his work on Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) for 6G systems, including liquid crystal-based designs for fast beam switching and temperature compensation. His publications emphasize practical implementations in mmWave communication, security protocols, and experimental validation. Scientific Awards : Athene Young Investigator Prize (2017) Educational Fellowship (2025) Asadi contributes to the academic community through committee roles at major conferences like IEEE INFOCOM , IEEE ICNP , and ACM CoNEXT , and his work on D2D communication has been cited as an ESI highly cited paper.
Anna Dawid-Lekowska is an Assistant Professor at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) and affiliated with the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION) at Leiden University, Netherlands. She leads a research group within the aQa group, focusing on the intersection of machine learning and quantum physics. Previously, she was a Research Fellow at the Center for Computational Quantum Physics, Flatiron Institute, New York. PhD in Physics and Photonics (joint, cotutelle), University of Warsaw & ICFO, Spain MSc in Quantum Chemistry, University of Warsaw BSc in Biotechnology, University of Warsaw Anna's research centers on interpretable machine learning for scientific discovery, particularly in quantum systems. She investigates how overparametrized models generalize, the role of loss landscape flatness, and double descent phenomena. Her work bridges deep learning with quantum simulations, aiming to detect quantum phase transitions and extract physical insights from trained models. She also explores ultracold molecules and novel quantum phases using simulation platforms. Her recent publications demonstrate a strong trend in applying machine learning to automate and interpret quantum experiments, such as detecting laser cooling schemes and understanding neural network initialization. The work emphasizes interpretability, aiming to make AI a transparent scientific tool rather than a black box. Anna has received significant recognition, including: 2022 FNP START laureate Participant in the 2024 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting She is actively mentoring and expanding her group, currently recruiting PhD students and postdoctoral researchers. Her work is supported by institutional affiliations with leading research centers and collaborations across Europe and the US. Anna also engages in science communication and education, having lectured at the Nordita Winter School on Machine Learning and Physics. She is involved in the aQa research group, which focuses on quantum algorithms and AI, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration between computer science and physics. Her lab integrates theoretical modeling, algorithm development, and applications to quantum experiments.
Professor David Abbink is a Full Professor of Haptic Human-Robot Interaction at Delft University of Technology, holding a joint appointment between the Department of Cognitive Robotics in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Design Engineering since November 2023. He founded the Delft Haptics Lab and co-founded the Cognitive Robotics Department in 2017. Abbink leads the transdisciplinary research and innovation centre FRAIM, which was awarded the prestigious NWO Stevin Premie (Dutch Nobel Prize equivalent) in June 2024. Trained as a mechanical engineer specializing in biomechanics, Abbink's research focuses on human behavior adaptations when interacting with autonomous systems. He has published over a hundred scientific articles on human-robot interaction, haptics, shared control, tele-operation, driver assistance systems, and sensorimotor control. His research has been funded by industry partners (Nissan, Boeing, Renault), RVO (Brightsky project 2022-2026), and the Dutch Science Foundation NWO through personal grants (VENI 2010-2014, VIDI 2015-2019). Abbink's recent work centers on worker-robot relations as an academic focus, collaborating with organizations like Erasmus Medical Centre for nursing work, Schiphol and KLM for baggage handling, and KLM Engine Repair Services for maintenance work. He also serves as scientific director for the Centre for Meaningful Human Control, launched in October 2024. His work bridges engineering, social sciences, and practical applications to responsibly shape the future of work with emerging robotic capabilities. NWO Stevin Premie (2024) Best IEEE SMC journal paper on Cybernetics (2019) Top 25 scientific talents according to New Scientist (2015) Best teacher of Faculty 3mE (2013, 2014) Best teacher of Department of BioMechanical Engineering (seven consecutive years) Abbink has supervised over 110 MSc students and 11 PhD students. His educational contributions include developing the Master Programme in Robotics at TU Delft and receiving international recognition for his course 'The Human Controller.' He is also a prominent science communicator, featured on national television, radio, and major Dutch newspapers, and has delivered lectures at venues like The Royal Institution and Lowlands Festival. Despite his academic commitments, Abbink maintains a drummer persona, having recorded four albums and performed over 400 shows across three continents between 1999-2014.
Sara Magliacane is an Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam , affiliated with the Amsterdam Machine Learning Lab (AMLab) and the Informatics Institute . She also holds a Research Scientist position at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and has been an ELLIS Scholar since 2022. Education PhD in Artificial Intelligence (2017), VU Amsterdam MSc in Computer Engineering (2011), Politecnico di Milano BSc in Computer Engineering (2008), Università degli Studi di Trieste Research Focus : At the intersection of Causality and Machine Learning , her work addresses Causal Representation Learning from high-dimensional data (images, sequences) Causal Discovery in latent confounder scenarios Causality-inspired Reinforcement Learning for robustness and adaptability Neurosymbolic AI for theoretical guarantees Publication Trends : Her recent work explores Factored adaptation in non-stationary environments (NeurIPS 2022) Temporal causal identifiability (ICML 2022) Binary interaction-based causal discovery (UAI 2023) Safe exploration in visual RL (HSCC 2021) Structure learning lower bounds (NeurIPS 2020) Scientific Recognition : ELLIS Scholar (2022–present) Spotlight presentations at ICML 2022 and ICLR 2022 Advising & Collaborations : Currently supervising 6 PhD students at the University of Amsterdam and AUMC, with 12 alumni advisees. Collaborates with researchers at MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, Simons Institute, and TUM.
Nina Schwarz is Assistant Professor of human-environment interactions in cities at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Geo-Information Management, ITC—University of Twente. Holding a Diploma in Environmental Sciences (University of Lüneburg, 2003) and a PhD in Social and Economic Sciences (University of Kassel, 2007), she spent a decade as senior scientist at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ before joining ITC. Her interdisciplinary research integrates urban land-use science, ecosystem-service evaluation and advanced modelling techniques—especially agent-based models—to explore sustainable urban development under global change. Research interests revolve around three interconnected themes: (i) urban land-use change —understanding how residential, commercial and green-space dynamics co-evolve; (ii) urban ecosystem services —quantifying both supply and demand of services such as local climate regulation, recreation and biodiversity; and (iii) behavioural modelling —formalising human decision-making to simulate policy scenarios ranging from slum-upgrading to vineyard management. She actively links these themes to UN Sustainable Development Goals, notably SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities) and SDG 15 (Life on Land). Recent publications (2022-2025) reveal a methodological breadth spanning citizen-science impact assessment in Suriname, cooling effects of urban water bodies in Chinese mega-cities, European wine-growers’ adaptive behaviour, and methodological advances in upscaling and validating agent-based land-use models. Across these studies, Schwarz consistently combines empirical field data, geospatial analytics and participatory approaches to produce policy-relevant insights for cities in both the Global North and South. She has (co-)authored >80 peer-reviewed works, accumulating c. 5 900 citations and an h-index of 28 (Scopus). While specific honours are not itemised in the supplied text, her sustained citation impact and invited contributions to major conferences (e.g., iEMSs 2020, IAHR 2025) underscore scientific recognition. Schwarz frequently engages with societal stakeholders: her projects have generated open datasets on urban green-space monitoring in Paramaribo, e-learning modules for Latin-American universities, and interactive dashboards for sustainable water management. Within ITC she contributes to capacity-building programmes for emerging economies, supervises graduate researchers and maintains active collaborations across Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia. No explicit lists of PhD students or personal grants are provided in the current corpus, but her leadership of externally funded projects (e.g., citizen-science evaluation, vineyard decision-making database) indicates ongoing acquisition of research funding.
Dr. Ana Lucic is an Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam , holding a joint appointment between the Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation (ILLC) and the Informatics Institute . Her research focuses on interpretable machine learning for applications in science and society, with emphasis on Earth system modeling and AI for environmental forecasting . PhD in Explainable Machine Learning (University of Amsterdam, 2022) MSc/BSc in Mathematics (McMaster University, Canada) Former researcher at Microsoft Research AI for Science and Partnership on AI Her recent work includes Aurora , a foundation model for Earth system forecasting published in Nature , and Clifford-Steerable CNNs at ICML 2024. Ana actively mentors PhD students and leads projects in mechanistic interpretability and geospatial machine learning . Scientific awards include top placements in ML competitions. She contributes to open science through reproducibility initiatives and collaborates with AI for climate consortia.
Ivana Nikoloska is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). She is affiliated with the Center for Quantum Materials and Technology Eindhoven and BIASlab (Bayesian Intelligence and Stochastic Agents Lab). Her academic career includes prior roles as a Research Associate at King’s College London and a Visiting Researcher at Aalborg University. PhD: Monash University, Australia (2023) MSc & Dipl.-Ing.: University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius, North Macedonia Research Interests span foundational and applied machine learning, quantum computing, and information/communication engineering. Her work focuses on integrating Bayesian inference, variational methods, and quantum technologies for tasks like signal processing, channel estimation, and power control optimization. Quantum Machine Learning Bayesian Simulation-Based Inference Meta-learning for Wireless Systems Hybrid Quantum-Classical Architectures Stochastic Signal Processing Quantum Sensing & Metrology Notable Trends in Publications include quantum recurrent neural networks with adaptive gating, Bayesian frameworks for quantum sensing, and meta-learning applications in communication systems. She explores variational inference for planning and robust algorithms for channel estimation under non-ideal conditions.
Elisa Perrone is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Eindhoven University of Technology. Her research focuses on dependence modeling, copula theory, and their applications in fields such as public transport analysis, environmental risk assessment, and renewable energy forecasting. Academic Rank: Assistant Professor University: Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) Department: Mathematics and Computer Science Elisa’s work explores discrete copulas, zero-inflated data, optimal experimental design, and uncertainty quantification. She has contributed to modeling dependence structures in complex datasets, particularly in transportation systems and climate science. Recent research outputs highlight copula-based statistical post-processing for weather forecasts, analysis of multi-way contingency tables, and uncertainty reduction in LED health management. Her publications span top-tier journals and conferences in statistics and applied mathematics. Scientific Award : Second Best Poster Presentation Award (2015) Elisa actively organizes workshops like the Eurandom Workshop on Dependence Modeling and contributes to editorial activities. She teaches courses on linear statistical models, regression models, and dependence modeling.
Fabian Ferrari is an Assistant Professor in Cultural AI at Utrecht University, working in the Department of Media and Culture Studies within the Humanities faculty. He is affiliated with the Centre for Digital Humanities and is a member of the focus area Governing the Digital Society . Previously, he served as a Postdoctoral Researcher (2022-2024) in the same focus area and was a Visiting Scholar (2021-2022) at the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology in Montréal. Dr. Ferrari's research focuses on the intersection of artificial intelligence, digital platforms, and society. His work examines AI governance, algorithmic power, digital labor, and the infrastructural geographies of AI systems. He investigates how public investments in AI infrastructure can reconcile competitiveness with public value creation, particularly through his upcoming NWO-funded Veni project Conditional Computing: Reimagining the Governance of Public AI Infrastructure , which begins in January 2026. His publication record demonstrates significant scholarly impact, with articles in top journals including Nature Machine Intelligence , Cultural Studies , New Media & Society , Big Data & Society , and Competition & Change . He has also co-edited the open-access book Digital Work in the Planetary Market published by MIT Press. Ferrari's work is frequently cited and has influenced policy discussions, as evidenced by multiple policy citations across his publications. NWO Veni grant for research on public AI infrastructure Dr. Ferrari's research collaborations span multiple institutions and international teams. He has frequently co-authored with scholars including Mark Graham, José van Dijck, and Anne Helmond. His work bridges technical, social, and policy dimensions of AI systems, with particular attention to labor implications and governance frameworks. He is actively engaged in both academic and public discourse on AI's societal implications, contributing to progressive policy visions for generative AI.
Joris M. Mooij is a Professor of Mathematical Statistics at the Korteweg-De Vries Institute of the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. His research focuses on causality, spanning causal modeling, discovery, and inference with applications in biology, medicine, fairness, and business analytics. He combines mathematical modeling with statistical and algorithmic approaches in his work. Dr. Mooij received his PhD with honors from Radboud University Nijmegen in 2007, focusing on approximate inference in graphical models. After postdoctoral work at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, he obtained an NWO VENI grant in 2011 for further postdoctoral research at Radboud University. He became Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam's Informatics Institute in 2013, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2017, and became a full Professor of Mathematical Statistics in 2020. Dr. Mooij's research centers on causal inference, with particular expertise in structural causal models, cyclic causal systems, and causal discovery algorithms. His work addresses fundamental questions about when causal relationships can be identified from observational data and how to develop robust causal discovery methods that work in complex real-world settings with latent variables, cycles, and selection bias. He has made significant contributions to understanding the limitations of existing causal discovery approaches and developing new methods that overcome these limitations. His research group organizes the Amsterdam Causality Meeting series and develops theoretical frameworks for causal modeling that encompass both acyclic and cyclic systems. Dr. Mooij has collaborated extensively on applications of causal methods in biological systems, including protein signaling networks and gene expression data. The group's recent work explores performative predictions, causal domain adaptation, and robust causal discovery methods that account for selection bias and missing data. Dr. Mooij has received numerous awards for his research, including: Best paper award at UAI for "Establishing Markov equivalence in cyclic directed graphs" IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society 2011 Letters Prize Paper Award ICML Test of Time Honorable Mention Best student paper award at UAI 2010 He has secured competitive research funding through an NWO VENI grant, NWO VIDI grant, and an ERC Starting Grant, which supported the establishment of his research group consisting of 3 PhD students and 3 postdocs focused entirely on causality. Dr. Mooij has supervised several PhD students, including Tineke Blom, whose work on "Causality and Independence in Perfectly Adapted Dynamical Systems" significantly influenced his thinking about causality in complex systems. He has co-taught the MasterMath course on Causality and published lecture notes titled "A Mathematical Introduction to Causality." His research continues to push the boundaries of causal inference methodology and its applications across diverse scientific domains.
Sofie Haesaert is an Assistant Professor in the Control Systems group at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology. Her work focuses on formal verification and control synthesis methods for cyber-physical systems, particularly through stochastic simulation relations and temporal logic specifications. Education: BSc (cum laude) and MSc (cum laude) in Mechanical Engineering and Systems & Control from Delft University of Technology; PhD from Eindhoven University of Technology (2017) Experience: Postdoctoral researcher at Caltech (2017-2018), then returned to TU/e as Assistant Professor Her research interests include: Cyber-physical systems verification Stochastic control methods Temporal logic specification Markov decision processes Formal methods in control engineering Model abstractions and simulation relations Recent publications show strong focus on: Stochastic temporal logic control Robust and risk-aware control Multi-agent system verification Formal synthesis via simulation relations AI integration in control systems Software tools for formal control Scientific achievements: Veni Grant recipient (2020) Co-developer of the SySCoRe toolset for stochastic control synthesis Contributor to formal verification benchmarks through ARCH-COMP reports She contributes to education through courses on: Control principles for engineered systems Control challenges in autonomous racing Supervisory control of cyber-physical systems Haesaert collaborates across disciplines including computer science, applied mathematics, and robotics, with over 750 citations and significant contributions to formal control theory for stochastic systems. Her work bridges theoretical developments with practical applications in autonomous systems and complex control architectures.
Anna Vilanova is a Full Professor in Visual Analytics at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), and is associated with the Electrical Engineering department's Signal Processing Systems. Previously, she served as Associate Professor at TU Delft (2013-2019) and Assistant Professor at TU/e (2002-2013). Her research focuses on Visual Analytics for high-dimensional data , explainable AI , and biomedical applications including Diffusion Weighted Imaging, 4D Flow, and Pangenomics. Education: Doctorate in Computer Graphics & Visualization (2001) Master in Computer Science (1997), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Research Highlights: Vilanova leads work on Visual Analytics systems for biomedical data, with recent publications in Diffusion MRI modeling , Tractography visualization , Explainable AI frameworks , and Pangenomic variant analysis . Her work bridges dimensionality reduction , uncertainty visualization , and medical imaging applications. Scientific Contributions: NWO-Veni grant (2005): "Visualization of global tensor information for diffusion tensor imaging" NWO-Aspasia grant (2013) Best Poster Award EuroVis (2025) Best Demo/Poster Awards (2022) Leadership & Service: Vilanova serves on the IEEE VIS Steering Committee , was EUROGRAPHICS President (2019-2022), and contributes to conferences like IEEE Visualization and EG-EuroVis . She co-founded the EAISI Health research initiative at TU/e.
Gabriele Liga is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), affiliated with the Signal Processing Systems (SPS) Group. He holds a Marie Curie Eurotech Fellowship focusing on signal shaping techniques for nonlinear optical fiber channels. His academic journey includes a Ph.D. in optical communications from University College London, followed by postdoctoral research in digital signal processing and nonlinearity compensation. Education: B.Sc. in Telecommunications Engineering from Università degli Studi di Palermo (2005), M.Sc. in Telecommunications Engineering from Politecnico di Milano (2011), and a Ph.D. in Optical Communications from University College London (2017). Research Interests: Digital communications, information theory, fiber-optic systems, nonlinearity compensation, channel coding, and multi-user optical communication theory. His work emphasizes achieving transmission limits through signal shaping and advanced signal processing techniques. Projects: Active roles in NESTOR (Next-gen optical networks), QuNEST (quantum communication security), Fun-NOTCH (nonlinear optical channel fundamentals), and SSTOC (signal shaping tailored to optical channels). Collaborations span institutions globally, focusing on optical fiber communication challenges. Awards: 2023 ACP/POEM Best Student Paper Award and 2019 OECC Best Paper Award. Serves as a reviewer for IEEE journals and OSA publications. Labs/Teams: Core member of the SPS Group and involved in interdisciplinary projects blending theory and experimental validation.
Anuj Pathania serves as an Assistant Professor in the Parallel Computing Systems (PCS) group within the Informatics Institute at the University of Amsterdam's Faculty of Science. His research pioneers sustainable computing systems operating under severe power, thermal, and reliability constraints, with significant contributions to energy-efficient hardware design and embedded systems. Education: PhD in Computer Science (2018), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology MSc in Computer Science (2012), National University of Singapore B.Tech in Computer Science (2009), Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Technology Pathania's research centers on low-power design and sustainable systems for constrained environments, with particular expertise in thermal management of 3D-stacked architectures and energy-efficient machine learning inference . His work bridges electronic design automation with real-world reliability challenges, developing novel power budgeting techniques like T-TSP that incorporate transient temperature effects ignored by conventional methods. Current projects include EU-funded initiatives on energy labeling for digital services, addressing ecological impacts through technological, behavioral, and legal frameworks. His publication trajectory reveals a strategic evolution toward zero-waste computing , with recent work (2023-2025) focusing on hardware-software co-design for edge AI, energy modeling across computing continua, and parameter-efficient neural adaptation. Key themes include thermal-aware scheduling for S-NUCA many-cores, cooperative processor utilization in heterogeneous systems, and sustainability metrics for digital services. Scientific Recognition: Best Paper Award Nomination at IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI 2023 for 3D-TTP power budgeting technique Pathania actively mentors 4 PhD students (Ehsan Aghapour, Saeedeh Baneshi, Sudam Wasala, Yixian Shen) and has successfully supervised 5 Master's theses (including Cum Laude defenses by Joris op ten Berg and Jurre Wolff). His research is supported by major grants including Energy Labels for Ecologically Sustainable Digital Services (2023-2024) and Towards Zero-Waste Computing (2021-2025), developing simulation frameworks like HotSniper and CoMeT for thermal analysis. The PCS group maintains strong industry collaborations with ARM and NVIDIA, particularly through tools like ARM-CO-UP for heterogeneous processor utilization.
