Welcome to our 12 new colleagues

We welcomed 12 new colleagues within itec: Paul Van Eecke, Lien De Bie, Kim Dekeyser, Rani Van Schoors, Ana Beatriz Barbosa Mendes, Jonas Doumen, Jinho Kim, Berten Hurkmans, Benedicte Seynhaeve, Klest Dedja, Sohum Bhatt and Dries Debeer.

Lien De Bie

Function: project manager i-Learn project
Starting date: 19/08/2019
Nationality: Belgian

Lien De Bie started her professional career in October 2011 at the non-profit organisation Onze Nieuwe Toekomst, where she worked as a project officer for policy participation. She then joined the non-profit organisation Ithaka as a project officer for product development on the Cloudina project, followed by the BlueAssist project where she acted as a coach.
Accordingly, Lien De Bie continued her professional career at the start-up TinQwise, which she helped to develop into a thriving and dynamic company. As a learning consultant and concept lead, she was responsible for developing learning campaigns and digital transformations within a number of leading companies, such as Belfius, BMW, Telenet, BNP and Barry Callebaut.
Within itec, Lien De Bie will be responsible for the project management of the i-Learn project, which aims to bring more personalized learning to Flemish education.

Kim Dekeyser

Function: educational research assistant for the Cosmo project
Starting date: 26/08/2019
Nationality: Belgian

Kim obtained her bachelor’s degree as an economics, religion and computer science teacher in 2008 at KHBO Bruges and KATHO in Torhout. She then spent 10 years in the classroom (in BuSO Onze Jeugd Roeselare, BuSO Sint-Idesbald Roeselare and CVO Altus Bruges, among others). She combined the last 2 years of her teaching experience with obtaining her master’s degree in educational sciences at the KU Leuven. The combination of a full-time job, studies and a family already showed her excellent organizing skills. She is now ready to broaden her horizons. Kim will develop and evaluate augmented and virtual reality applications for assembly training in secondary schools, in interaction with the partners the imec.icon project Cosmo.

Rani Van Schoors

Function: PHD researcher in instructional design for the i-Learn project
Starting date: 1/09/2019
Nationality: Belgian

Rani Van Schoors obtained her master’s degree in pedagogy at the University of Ghent with great distinction in 2019. She did a research internship within the research group Culture and Education on research into the implementation of virtual reality in the cultural sector. She also did a research internship at the research group imec-MICT-UGent on the project ILLUMINATE where she worked on VR-storytelling.
Her master’s thesis was a self-chosen subject on VR as a narrative medium, which she completed with great distinction. Rani will now start a PHD project under the supervision of prof. Fien Depaepe, prof. Jan Elen and dr. Annelies Raes.

Dr. Paul Van Eecke

Function: senior researcher in language & technology
Starting date: 1/06/2019
Nationality: Belgian

Paul obtained his master of arts in linguistics KU Leuven (campus Kortrijk) in 2012, after which he continued his studies in the master in Artificial Intelligence.
Paul started his professional career in January 2014 at the prestigious Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Paris, where he conducted independent strategic basic research in the field of AI with a focus on the computational processing and understanding of natural language.
This research laid the foundation for his doctoral thesis, which he defended in October 2018 at the AI lab of the VUB. The PhD is situated in the field of computational construction grammar and evolutionary linguistics, with applications in robotics, and was among others supervised by Prof. Luc Steels, one of the founders of AI in Flanders.
At itec, Paul will be responsible for strategic basic research in natural language processing with applications in natural language acquisition and in the manufacturing industry (e.g. robotics).

Ana Beatriz Barbosa Mendes

Function: PHD researcher in statistics
Starting date: 15/09/2019
Nationality: Brazilian

Ana obtained her master’s degree in psychological research methods with advanced statistics at the University of Sheffield, UK in 2019 with dinstinction. In Sheffield, she also acted as an international student ambassador, as international student representative at the Women’s committee and as volunteer at the British Science Association.
Before that, she studied psychobiology in Sao Paulo (Brazil), where she was allowed to do a year’s exchange programme with the University of Exeter. During her undergraduate studies, she also co-founded and presided a student society focused on improving scientific education for bachelor’s students.
Within itec, Ana will start a PHD project on multilevel meta-analysis under the supervision of prof. Wim Van Den Noortgate.

Jonas Doumen

Function: PHD researcher in language & technology
Starting date: 1/10/2019
Nationality: Belgian

Jonas obtained a master in Linguistics in 2013 and a master in Artificial Intelligence in 2014, both at the KU Leuven. During his studies, he did a year-long internship at Microsoft Ireland, where he worked on natural language technologies, in particular on the development of spell checkers. Jonas started his professional career in October 2014 at Nuance Communications, first in Aachen, Germany and later in Merelbeke, Belgium. At Nuance, he was a member of the Speech Output team, where he was responsible for optimising the development and test workflow for the delivery of text-to-speech products to the automotive market. Within itec, Jonas will start a PHD project under the supervision of prof. Piet Desmet, prof. Celine Vens and dr. Paul Van Eecke. During his PHD project, which is situated at the crossroads of the fields of emergent communication and computational linguistics, he will investigate mechanisms through which artificial agents can build up flexible, adaptive and transparent (construction) grammars through task-based communicative interactions. Potential applications of his research project include more natural and transparent human-computer interfaces and intelligent tutoring systems.

Jinho Kim

Function: senior researcher in statistical modelling
Starting date: 07/10/2019
Nationality: South Korean

Jinho obtained his PHD in education in 2018, with a specialization in Quantitative Methods and Evaluation, from the Graduate School of Education at University of California, Berkeley. His dissertation research dealt with psychometric modeling (titled Extensions and Applications of Item Explanatory Models to Polytomous Data in Item Response Theory). In his dissertation, he investigated how to extend and apply item explanatory IRT models to polytomous data, which can provide explanatory inferences from the item response data for improving item design, item generation, and test development and validation in educational measurement practices. He continued his academic career as a postdoctoral researcher at the Berkeley Evaluation and Assessment Research (BEAR) Center, working with Professor Mark Wilson.
Jinho’s academic background resides in educational research methodologies (i.e., educational statistics, measurement, and evaluation), psychometrics, and data analysis/management skills.
Within itec, Jinho will be responsible for further developing the educational statistics and measurement research line, by developing, evaluating and optimizing methods and techniques and by studying their application primarily within the domain of Smart Education, but also within other domains such as media and health.

Berten Hurkmans

Function: researcher on the BHC21 project
Starting date: 15/10/2019
Nationality: Belgian

Berten obtained his degree in pedagogical sciences, option education science with distinction at the University of Ghent in 2019. His master’s thesis dealt with argumentative skills and citizenship. Before that, he obtained his professional bachelor’s degree in secondary education (engineering and mathematics) at the Karel de Grote Hogeschool with distinction.
Within itec, Berten will work as a researcher on the Boosting Human Capital for the 21st century (BHC21) project, which focuses on innovative teaching aids in vocational training for low-skilled people.

Dries Debeer

Function: senior researcher on learning analytics for the i-Learn project
Starting date: 1/01/2020
Nationality: Belgian

After obtaining his master’s degree in psychology and master’s degree in journalism, Dries Debeer worked for one year as a project researcher at the Lessius Hogeschool in Antwerp, combined with a part-time job as a clinical psychologist at Johnson & Johnson. He started his PhD in psychology at the KU Leuven on 1/10/2010 with Prof. Dr. Rianne Janssen as a doctoral assistant and obtained his PhD successfully in 2016 on “Item-position effects and missing responses in large-scale assessments: models and applications”. In his PhD project he did research on explanatory IRT in educational large-scale assessments and modelling item-position effects and missing responses using IRT.
He continued his academic career in Zurich as a postdoctoral researcher where he researched psychological methods, evaluation and statistics using IRT models and applications, automated test compositions and random forests variables. Within itec, Dries will be responsible for managing and executing the research line on learning analytics for the i-Learn project.

Klest Dedja

Function: PHD researcher on machine learning and AI
Starting date: 1/12/2019
Nationality: Italian

Klest will start a PHD project under the supervision of prof. Celine Vens on explainable AI and machine learning.

Sohum Bhatt

Function: PHD researcher on learning analytics for the i-Learn project
Starting date: 1/12/2019
Nationality: USA

Sohum Bhatt obtained his bachelor’s degree in psychology and biology at the Virginia Commonwealth University with magna cum laude. He is about to obtain his master’s degree in psychological research methods and advanced statistics at the University of Sheffield UK with high grades. In his master’s thesis, he used complex statistical and machine learning techniques to analyze and visualize eye tracking data. In Sheffield, he also worked as a project researcher and a research assistant, where he gained additional experience with conducting research.
Within itec, Sohum will start a PHD project on the learning analytics within the i-Learn project under the supervision of prof. Wim Van Den Noortgate and prof. Katrien Verbert.

Benedikte Seynhaeve

Function: policy officer
Starting date: 1/11/2019
Nationality: Belgian

Benedicte Seynhaeve started her professional career in 2009 at the KU Leuven Language Institute, as a scientific assistant, where she taught NT2 and Academic Dutch. After this first professional experience she started with a PhD at the Faculty of Arts at the KU Leuven, which she successfully obtained in 2016. Benedicte then carried out a teaching assignment at the CVO Miras, after which she soon started working as a coordinator of the learning network at the Arhus Knowledge Centre. Here, she performed policy support work, wrote project proposals and carried out the day-to-day monitoring and coordination of these projects. In addition, she was responsible for the further development of the Arhus network with a wide range of different partner organisations (including schools, entrepreneurs, companies, etc.). Within itec, she will be responsible for the follow-up and coordination of several research projects, and will amongst others be responsible for stakeholder management within the i-Learn project.