Meet the team - unofficial

Charlotte fell in love with robotics when she was 10 years old. After patiently waiting to be old enough to study electromechanical engineering at UCLouvain, Belgium, she realized that (i) mechanics was not really her thing, and (ii) her core passion was really about cracking the inner workings of the brain and of intelligence. When she came across the field of neuromorphic engineering in 2015, her curiosity got trapped and never escaped. She has thus spent the last decade building digital integrated circuits that take inspiration from (parts of) the brain, targeting (extreme-)edge computing. Now, together with her team, she cannot wait to scale up these efforts toward complex, multi-scale intelligence that can deal with uncertain environments with little supervision, data, and resources.

When she is not busy trying to understand how brains work, Charlotte enjoys composing music on her piano. Her main fuel is matcha tea and chocolate.

Looking for additional info? Adrian is Belgian, lives primarily in Brussels and is definitely attached to his home country and culture! He fluently speaks French, Dutch and English, and tries to improve his quite basic skills in Italian...

On the private side, Adrian's agenda is usually quite busy as well! Mainly, he is fond of choir singing (from sacred music to more recent composition - as long as it remains nicely polyphonic!), and is therefore parts of several choirs. He also frequently conducts amateur-level choir ensembles. On top of this, Adrian is also involved in the organization of conference cycles for young adults (20-35), where renown speakers attempt to inspire participants on how to be a leader of hope for tomorrow, based on their own rich life experience. Finally, when he is not reading or away on a journey, Adrian likes spending quality time with people around him to create lively atmospheres, striving for harmony.

"À qui l'on a beaucoup donné, on demandera beaucoup ; à qui l'on a beaucoup confié, on réclamera davantage" Lc 12, 39-48

Martin has always been passionate about teaching and learning things, in research as in life. This is why he joined a university project called "Kotangente" whose objective was to help students with difficulties in mathematics and physics. This later led to his job as teaching assistant at UCLouvain. On a more personal note, he fluently speaks French and English, but as some notions in Dutch, Spanish and Italian. He is also involved in a wide range of activities. He sings bass in various vocal groups ranging from small a cappella pop groups to larger classical choirs, he dances rock, salsa and tango with his girlfriend, and he likes going for a run once in a while. If you have some weird new activity that you like and would like to share, he might be up for discovering it !

If Davide is not in his office, you will most likely find him at the gym looking for an available bench press. He has a genuine love for pasta, pizza, and red wine, much like his passion for taking long walks (have I mentioned he is Italian?). Aside from reading, training, and eating pizza, Davide enjoys engaging in intellectual discussions and spending quality time with people. He has a strong interest in probability and statistics, mathematics, and algorithmic information theory, as well as their wild philosophical aspects. Therefore, be prepared! You may be asked questions about free will's actual existence, the reality-simulation hypothesis, or simply being invited for another coffee break!

Outside of research Dennis has many other interests including but not limited to: Food(!), working out, Brazilian jiu jitsu, reading (fiction and non-fiction), movies, philosophical discussions, video games and enjoying a nice beverage (and some food) with friends.

Hey, my name is Douwe and I am a first-year PhD student in the CogSys lab. In my free time, I love to both watch and play sports. I actively play tennis + football and like to go to for a bike ride in the summer, while in the winter I really love to go ice skating. As far as watching sports goes, I am an avid Lakers-Real Madrid-Ajax-Djokovic-Verstappen fan and really enjoy to see the NBA, American Football, road cycling, the olympics, football, tennis, F1 and iceskating on TV.

During the holidays, I like to go for hikes and play beach tennis (where possible of course). My hobbies include photography and taking care of plants as well as traveling around (preferably by train!) and visiting new places. I am also an avid meme maker: I initiated our team's meme of the month competition, although I haven't been so succesful here yet :).

Last but certainly not least, I really love transformers, both the robots and the deep net architecture. As Andrej Karpathy (my favorite researcher) once said, and I wholeheartedly agree with him: is it the best idea in AI so far.

If you happen to meet Guilherme outside the office, you will find a (hopefully on that day) cheerful Portuguese who really misses his dog. More likely than not he will either be at the gym complaining about people's lifting techniques, trying to find somewhere to play piano or just generally having a good time with other friendly people, especially if it involves beers and/or food.

Do be warned that in the event that you bring up any of the following subjects when he is around: Football, Video Games, Books, Movies, or any subject related to his field of study, you will be met with an extensive, perhaps cumbersome inquiry about what you think, as Guilherme happens to be very curious about other's opinions on these matters.

What could be better than a good meal for dinner? As you can imagine, I love cooking, especially when it's for others. I'm a simple person who appreciates life's little pleasures. On the other hand, I don't do much sport and coffee.

I also have rather strange tastes when it comes to pets. At the moment I have a beautiful lizard called BlueBlue, but I'd love to have a little pig in the future. And finally, to top it all off, I like to make the lamest jokes that exist.