Professor (Hoogleraar) 

Address: Departments of Computer Science and Mathematics, Leuven, Belgium 

Email: first_name.last_name@kuleuven.be 

Profiles: ORCID, arXiv, Google Scholar, MathSciNet, LinkedIn

I am a tenured Professor (Hoogleraar) in the Departments of Mathematics and Computer Science at KU Leuven, where I lead the A3G — Advances in Applied Algebraic Geometry Group. Prior to joining KU Leuven, I was a tenured BOFZAP Professor (Hoogleraar) at Ghent University, and before that, a Reader at the University of Bristol and an EPSRC Early Career Fellow. Since 2018, I have also been an EPSRC Full College Member and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

My research is currently supported by the FWO (Flanders Research Foundation) and KU Leuven iBOF grant. Previously, it was partially supported by U. Ghent's BOF professorship, the UK EPSRC, the UiT Aurora MASCOT project, and the London Mathematical Society (LMS).

My research lies in Applied Algebraic Geometry. In particular, I am interested in developing computational tools to study problems in statistics and probability theory, theoretical computer science, mathematical optimization, and quantum physics. On the theoretical side, I work on toric degenerations, combinatorial divisor theory, matroid and determinantal varieties, tensors, conditional probabilities, graphical models, and system reliability theory.

Teaching (current semester):

• Master course: Complex Analysis and Applications, at the CS Department

• Bachelor course: Probleemoplossend werken in de wiskunde (in Dutch), at the Maths Department

• Number Theory and Algebraic Geometry Seminars: I am serving as the main organiser of the weekly seminars in the Algebra section for this academic year. If you are interested in giving a talk, please feel free to contact me.

• Note: Due to university policy, official seminar and course webpages may list the sector chair (for seminars) or another colleague (for courses), even when I am fully responsible for the organisation and teaching. This has been the case for the Number Theory and Algebraic Geometry Weekly Seminars (Algebra Section, 2025–2026), as well as the master’s courses Numerical Non-linear Algebra (Computer Science, Spring 2024) and Foundations of Combinatorial Algebraic Geometry (Mathematics, Spring 2023).

News:

• Weekly Reading Seminars on Cluster Algebras, organised by Daisie Rock 

• Weekly Reading Seminars on Gröbner Bases and Applications, organised by Matthais Orth 

• Open PhD position on Rigidity Theory and Tropical Geometry, co-supervised with Sean Dewar. Find more details here.

• Workshop Algebraic Statistics and Multistate Models, Helsinki

• Conference 'Group actions, combinatorial methods, and Fano varieties' in honor of Prof. Jürgen Hausen's 60th birthday, invited talk.

• MEGA 2024,  plenary talk.

• Weekly A3G Seminars: Advances in Applied, Algorithmic and Combinatorial Algebraic Geometry Seminars, starting October 15, 2024

• Reading Seminars on Algorithms in Algebraic Geometry, organised by Rémi Prébet and Erdenebayar Bayarmagnai.

• Online Seminars on Matroids and Applications co-organised by Duy Hu.

• Gröbner free methods and their applications, plenary talk.

• Workshop for Women in Commutative Algebra (WICA III), BIRS center in Oaxaca.

• Workshop for Women in Algebraic Statistics at the University of Oxford, organised by Jane Ivy Coons. 

• Internships positions available for undergraduate/master students. See this link for more details.

• PhD positions available in my research group at KU Leuven funded by the FWO project grant, FWO Odysseus grant and the KU Leuven iBOF grant. 

• Postdoc positions available (in computational algebraic geometry) in my research group at KU Leuven. 

Upcoming and Recent Organised Conferences and Workshops:

• 2025.04. Workshop Algebraic Statistics and Multistate Models, Helsinki, Finland

• 2025.03: Francophone Computer Algebra (JNCF), organized with Florent Bréhard, Pierre Lairez, Romain Lebreton, Aude Maignan, CIRM, France

• 2024.09: Theory and Algorithms in Graph Rigidity and Algebraic Statistics, co-organised with Bernd Schulze, Meera Sitharam, Shin-Ichi Tanigawa, Japan

• 2024.03: Francophone Computer Algebra (JNCF), organized with Jérémy Berthomieu, Florent Bréhard, Aude Maignan, François Ollivier, CIRM, France

• 2023.11: Workshop on Matroids and Applications, joint with the Research Center for Operations Management at KU Leuven. 

• 2023.09: Invitation to Algebraic Statistics and Applications, Workshop, part of the Algebraic Statistics and Our Changing World, the IMSI, USA

• 2023.08: Mathematical Methods in System Reliability, co-organised with Eduardo Sáenz-de-Cabezón and Henry Wynn at ICIAM 2023, Japan

• 2023.07: Nonlinear Algebra in Particle Physics Minisymposium, co-organised with Simon Telen at SIAM AG23, TU Eindhoven, The Netherlands

• 2023.06: Groups, Rings, and the Yang Baxter Equation, co-organiser, Blankenberge, Belgium

• 2022.12: Toric Degenerations, Workshop, co-organised with Lara Bossinger, Alessio Corti and Megumi Harada at Banff Research Station, Canada

• 2022.11: Tensors in statistics, optimization and machine learning, Workshop, co-organised with Francesco Galuppi, Luca Sodomaco at IMPAN, Poland

• 2021.06: MEGA Conference: Effective Methods in Algebraic Geometry at University of Tromsø, Norway

Past Tenured Employments:

• 2021.09 - 2022.07: BOFZAP Full Professor (Hoogleraar), tenured at Ghent University, Belgium

• 2020.03 - 2021.08: BOFZAP Associate Professor (Hoofddocent), tenured at Ghent University, Belgium

• 2019.08 - 2020.02: Reader (Associate Professor) in Pure Mathematics, tenured at University of Bristol, UK

• 2017.01 - 2019.08: Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Pure Mathematics, University of Bristol, UK

Editorial Boards:

• 2025 - 2026: Guest Editor, Algebraic Statistics, special issue of Algebraic Statistics in honor of Henry Wynn. Submission Link.

• Since 2022.05: Associate Editor, Journal of Symbolic Computation 

• Since 2022.01: Associate Editor, SIAM Journal on Applied Algebra and Geometry (SIAGA)

• Since 2020.01: Associate Editor, Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics

• 2021 - 2022: Guest Editor, Special Issue of the Journal of Symbolic Computation on the occasion of MEGA 2021

Scientific Committees:

• 2025: Program committee member, The 37th International Conference on Formal Power Series and Algebraic Combinatorics: FPSAC 2025

• Since 2022: Member of Scientific Advisory Board of the MEGA Conference on Effective Methods in Algebraic Geometry: MEGA

• 2022.02: Program committee member, The 17th MEGA Conference on Effective Methods in Algebraic Geometry: MEGA 2022

• 2022.01: Scientific committee member, Combinatorial Commutative Algebra Summer School, Gebze Technical University, Turkey 

• 2021.06: Committee member, The 16th MEGA Conference on Effective Methods in Algebraic Geometry: MEGA 2021

• 2018.07: Committee member, The 30th International Conference on Formal Power Series and Algebraic Combinatorics: FPSAC 2018

Academic Service:

• Since 2024: Member of the Faculty Diversity and Inclusion Committee, KU Leuven

• 2021 - 2022: FWO project panel member in Mathematical Sciences, Belgium

• 2025 - 2026: Ministerstvo školstva panel memver, Slovakia

• Since 2018: Reviewer for proposals submitted to EPSRC (UK), ICMS (UK), DFG (Germany), GACR (Czechia), and ISTA postdoc program (Austria)