I am an Associate Professor of robot learning at KU Leuven in Belgium. I hold a dual appointment within the departments of electrical and mechanical engineering (groups PSI and RAM). I am a member of the KU Leuven Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Leuven.AI) and sit on its steering committee, and I am a technical advisor for OpalAI.
Formerly I was group lead for the Perception Systems group, Mobility and Robotics section at NASA JPL, Pasadena, CA, and an Assistant Professor within the ICTEAM institute of UCLouvain, Belgium. I am a visiting researcher in the Systems and Modeling Group (University of Liège, Belgium) and in the Computer Vision and Active Perception lab (KTH Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, Stockholm, Sweden).
My research interests include robot learning/manipulation/mobility, computer vision, machine learning, and applications related to manufacturing, agriculture, and planetary exploration including Mars, Europa and Enceladus. At JPL, I was machine-vision lead for the surface mission of the NASA/ESA Mars Sample Return campaign (summarized in this invited lecture), and I worked on fun climbing robots such as the one shown in this video.
I regularly serve as associate editor for IROS, ICRA, and as reviewer for TRO, RAS, RSS and AURO.