About
I am an assistant professor in the Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence department at Tilburg University. After my studies in the discrete algebra and geometry group of the department of Mathematics and Computer science in Eindhoven, I defended my Ph.D. thesis in January 2012. That was about generalisations of a combinatorial theorem from Erdos, Ko and Rado over families of intersecting sets. The thesis involved algebraic graph theory and combinatorics. For the following four years, I worked in the industry in banking and consultancy environments as a quant and a data analyst, working with financial and trade data mainly. Then I returned to academia as a postdoc in the system architecture and network group at TUE in 2016. During my postdoc, I focused on computational trust, machine learning and sensor data.
My research interests include network analysis and learning on graph-structured data. I focus on understanding the relationship between graph structure—both topological and spectral properties—and the learning process. I am interested in graph-theoretical approaches to network analysis, particularly in studying network evolution, detecting key substructures for community detection or explainability, and making predictions on graph-structured data. Examples include brain networks and electrical grids. I am particularly interested in how relationships, communication, similarity, and information exchange—captured in edges—shape network structure, influence motif formation, and impact learning.
Data science projects with a social aspect motivates me a lot. This interest is visible in multiple research projects I am involved in, utilising AI to create a more inclusive and accessible world. Some examples are the ‘Child Growth Monitor’ by Zero hunger lab; focusing on malnutrition detection in children, Ilustre, a project to support the energy transition efforts in the Caribbean, and the Icon project of Zero poverty lab, linking brain networks and poverty.
I serve as the lab manager of the ICAI lab Ilustre. I am in the scientific advisory board for informatics of the Lorentz Center.
For my university profile page, please see here.