Anticipate

Background

Background

Diederik De Cock is a lecturer and researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). His research focuses on health outcomes, digital medicine, chronic disease and patient-centred care, with particular interest in obesity and musculoskeletal and inflammatory conditions. He is involved in interdisciplinary research combining clinical, epidemiological and digital approaches to better understand health, healthcare delivery and patient needs.

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Prof dr Patricia De Vriendt is an occupational therapist, gerontologist, researcher, and educator specializing in implementation science and value-based healthcare innovation. Her research aims to develop, evaluate, and implement interventions that improve health outcomes, participation, and autonomy for vulnerable populations. Through interdisciplinary collaboration and co-creation with healthcare professionals, policymakers, researchers, and end users, she seeks to bridge the gap between evidence and practice. Her work focuses on ensuring that innovations are not only effective but also feasible, adoptable, and capable of generating sustainable societal value.

Niel Hens is Full Professor of Biostatistics at Hasselt University (CenStat, I-Biostat & Data Science Institute) and Full Professor of Biostatistics and Holder of the Scientific Chair in Evidence-based Vaccinology at the University of Antwerp (Chermid, Vaxinfectio). He is elected member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts. After completing his PhD, entitled ‘Non- and Semi-parametric Techniques for Handling Missing Data’, in 2005, he developed an interest in modelling infectious diseases. He has authored more than 400 publications. He has been involved in several advisory boards on the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in Belgium and now focuses his research on pandemic preparedness.

Background

Background

I graduated from the KU Leuven with a master in Mathematical Engineering in 2020, and obtained PhD on Continual Learning at the lab of prof. Tuytelaars at the same university in 2025. After a 8-month postdoc studying OCR algorithms for Cuneiform writing, I joined the VUB AI lab and started working on the ANTICIPATE project. My main research interest concern the learning dynamics of machine learning algorithms and their applications to epidemic modelling.

I obtained my Master’s degree in Statistics and Data Science in 2021 and my PhD in Epidemiology and Statistics in 2025, both from Hasselt University (UHasselt), under the supervision of Prof. dr. Niel Hens and Prof. dr. Andrea Torneri. I subsequently continued as a postdoctoral researcher under the ESCAPE project, contributing to efforts to enhance Europe’s preparedness for future pandemics caused by emerging pathogens. My research focuses on developing statistical methods for incorporating social contact data into infectious disease modelling, which I will apply in the ANTICIPATE project.

Background

I graduated from Ghent University with an advanced master in Statistical Data Analysis in 2025, where my thesis focused on applications of Sequential Monte Carlo methods. Before that, I obtained a master in Computer Technology and worked for two years as a machine learning engineer in the telecommunications industry in China. Currently, I am a PhD student at the University of Antwerp supervised by prof. Hens and prof. Libin, where my research focuses on individual-based modeling for nosocomial disease transmission.

I completed my Integrated Master’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2025, focusing my master’s thesis on automated code generation using LLMs. Following my studies, I spent three months as an intern at the Centre for Research & Technology Hellas, where I conducted research on adversarial attacks against deep learning models, with a focus on Neural Trojans.  In November 2025, I joined the ANTICIPATE project, where my research focuses on the explainability and interpretability of Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning algorithms.

I graduated from Ghent University with a master in Bioscience Engineering in 2021, after which I obtained a master-na-master in Global Health at Ghent University, UAntwerp, VUB, UHasselt and KULeuven. Next, I worked for 2 years as a junior epidemiologist at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, after which I joined the ANTICIPATE project as a PhD student. My main research interests lie in the development and application of quantitative and genomic tools for early detection of novel pathogens and pandemic mitigation.

I graduated from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel with a Master of Science in Applied Sciences and Engineering: Computer Science – Artificial Intelligence. I am currently a PhD researcher at the VUB AI Lab, supervised by Prof. Pieter Libin and Prof. Ann Nowé. My research focuses on multi-objective reinforcement learning for epidemic mitigation to develop explainable intervention policies. My main research interests include reinforcement learning, explainable AI, and decision-making that balances public health outcomes with societal and economical impact.

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