Research

Roel’s research addresses challenges around the integration of data-driven technologies in societal infrastructure and institutions, in particular challenges around safety, sustainability and justice. In his research and teaching activities, he focuses on the following aspects:

• Data-driven methods for design and control of complex systems and services
• Integrating design and governance for the responsible integration of data-driven and algorithmic systems
• The political economy of advanced learning and control systems and their information technology infrastructures
• The environmental implications of “artificial intelligence”
• Safety of AI systems in sociotechnical design and policy contexts

Roel’s research is motivated by problems in energy (intelligent planning and operation of electric power distribution) and public administration. Roel also worked with biologists on problems in cancer diagnosis and treatment (understanding heterogeneity in breast cancer tumors). Roel is interested in engineering problems that require both technical and nontechnical analyses, leveraging the knowledge and legacy practices of domain experts and affected communities. From there, he explores opportunities of data-driven approaches to enable new functionality that is well-situated in complex sociotechnical domains.

With a background in management consulting and working with public institutions, Roel aims to come at his research problems in ways that take into account the practical context that domain stakeholders are faced with, while pushing the academic boundaries. Roel also finds motivation in helping students understand such contexts, in order for them to be more impactful and work on engineering solutions that promote socially and environmentally just outcomes.