My Ph.D. is in electrical engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. From 2006 to 2012 I was a lecturer at the School of Electronics and Computer Science of the University of Southampton, U.K. and from 2012 to 2022 a research professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. My expertise is in system identification and data-driven control. In 2010, I was awarded an ERC starting grant for a structured low-rank approximation approach to data-driven control. Current topics of interest are data-driven methods for nonlinear, time-varying, and distributed systems.

The objective of my research is unsupervised data-driven analysis and design of dynamical systems. The classical paradigm splits the problem into model identification and model-based design. In general, there is no separation principle for modeling and design, so that the two-stage approach may be suboptimal. I am investigating an alternative direct data-driven paradigm that combines modeling and design into one joint problem. In 2010, I proposed a solution approach for data-driven design based on structured low-rank approximation (ERC starting grant). More recently, I investigated convex relaxation, subspace, and regularization methods. Current topics of interest are data-driven methods for nonlinear, time-varying, and distributed systems. Besides data-driven design, I am interested in methods for teaching and learning that are effective in training critical thinking and creativity. I am an advocate of the open peer review as an alternative to the traditional closed review system.