Research Projects & Programmes
Below is an overview of my current research projects, and research programmes.
Although each PhD or Postdoc project is just as important by itself, these projects all are closely related to one or more of my long term research lines . Furthermore, some are part of bigger consortium projects with like minded researchers. On this page each project is briefly explained with a reference to my research lines. To contrast, for me research lines are ongoing research interests without a fixed starting or finishing date, whereas projects have a clear start and finish. Furthermore, I am a member of several TU Delft and or LDE (Leiden-Delft-Erasmus) research programmes, which are long-term initiatives on specific themes.
Current Research Projects
| Project | Type | My roles | Research lines |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hybrid Intelligence | NWO Gravitation | Co-PI, EB, MT | R1, R2, R3, R4, V |
| ESDiT | NWO Gravitation | Co-Appl | R1, V |
| ALGOSOC | NWO Gravitation | Affiliated | R1, V |
| OncodePact | NL Growfund | Co-Appl | R3, V |
| RED&BLUE | NWA | Co-Appl | R3 |
| HumaneAI Net | EU ICT48 | Affiliated | R1, V |
| TAILOR | EU ICT48 | Co-Appl | R4, V |
| CAS | NWO Perspective | Co-Appl | R2 |
| SPATIAL | EU H2020 | Co-Appl | R1, R3 |
| AI*MAN | DAI lab | Affiliated | R2, V |
| DI_lab | DAI lab | Affiliated | R3, V |
| HIPPO | DAI lab | Affiliated | R3, V |
| AiBLE | DAI lab | Affiliated | R4, V |
| SAEP | NWO | Affiliated | V |
Research Programmes
| Programme | Type | My roles | Research lines |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI Tech | TU Delft | EB | R1, V |
| Delft AI labs & Talent Programme | TU Delft | Affiliated | R1, R2, R3, R4, V |
| Digital Ethics Centre | TU Delft | Co-director | R3, V |
| Delft Design for Values | TU Delft | EB, co-founder | V |
| Convergence on AI, Data & Digitalisation | LDE | Affiliated | R1, R3 |
Short descriptions
Individuals and societies can greatly benefit from the use of data, AI and IT systems that are accountable, explainable, fair, safe, inclusive, and trustworthy. But how can we bridge the gap between abstract ethical discussions on these values and concrete digital innovations? We aim to translate ethical values in design requirements that can be used by engineers, decision and policy makers and regulators. I am co-director and affiliated researcher of the programme.
The DDfV Institute serves as a portal and booster for design for values research, education, outreach and co-creation at Delft University of Technology. The institute was found as we see a need to mitigate value failures of design, to embody values in design, and to generate values through design. Together with Prof. Jeroen van den Hoven I co-founded the institute in 2017 as a collaboration over the TU Delft departments (faculties). I serve as a board member and affiliated researcher.
Convergence is a programme of TU Delft, Leiden Universiteit & Medical Center, Erasmus University Rotterdam & Medical Center to strengthen collaboration and impact. The theme AI, Data & Digitalisation is one of its key themes of research. Digital transformation is irreversible, rapid and has changed much over the past decade, and that Artificial intelligence (AI) plays a key role in digitisation. AI is expected to have a massive socio-economic impact, and it relates to many challenges we are facing. In the Convergence theme AI, Data & Digitalisation, we study together how we can contribute to these challenges in society and health care ‘with’ and ‘in’ AI, and how the global scientific world can take a permanent leading role in this field. I am an affiliated researcher.
AiTech is TU Delft’s interdisciplinary research program on awareness, concepts, and design & engineering of autonomous technology under meaningful human control. The researchers address the gap between philosophical theory and engineering practice by identifying properties to facilitate meaningful human control. I am a researcher in the programme and part of the management board.
The H2020 EU project SPATIAL builds the pathway toward a trustworthy European cybersecurity sector, developing trustworthy governance and regulatory framework for AI-driven security in Europe. SPATIAL will tackle the identified gaps of data issues and black-box AI by designing and developing resilient accountable metrics, privacy-preserving methods, verification tools and system solutions that will serve as critical building blocks for trustworthy AI in ICT systems and cybersecurity. My expertise on responsible AI and agent technology are of value to this project.
The research first research objective of this EU ICT48 programme is to develop the foundations for trustworthy AI.
It is concerned with designing and developing AI systems that incorporate the safeguards that make them trustworthy, and respectful of human agency and expectations. Not only the mechanisms to maximize benefits, but also those for minimizing harm. My research on decision-support and on responsible AI contributes to this project.
This EU ICT48 programme aims to facilitate a European brand of trustworthy, ethical AI that enhances Human capabilities and empowers citizens and society to effectively deal with the challenges of an interconnected globalized world. My focus in this project is on responsible AI.
Injury-free sports and active life for everyone. Being active in sports contributes to health, unless people overtrain or develop a sports injury. The research project Citius Altius Sanius studies the role that technology can play in injury prevention. My role in this project (as promotor for a PhD candidate) comes from my expertise in value-senstive personalised support agents.
I am participating in four of the Delft AI Labs. These labs are committed to education, research and innovation in AI, data and digitalisation. These labs embody the bridge between research ‘in’ and ‘with’ AI, data and digitalisation. They foster cross-fertilization between talent and expertise, working to increase the impact of AI in the fields of applied sciences, design techniques and society. More information can be found on the sebsite.
The AI*MAN Lab is studying and trying to improve many aspects of human-AI teamwork. Experience shows that excellent performance improvements are possible when AI and humans work together, exploiting both human instincts for effective decisions in unknown situations and fast and logical AI decisions. In a human-AI team, decisions made by either the human or the AI agent may seem illogical to the other party if only individual goals are considered, so a mutual understanding of each other’s decision-making processes and actions is critical in pursuit of common team goals. We develop computational models of the way humans think and building logical models that will be used by AI agents able to propose decision suggestions and support transparent decision making. My role in this project (as promotor for a PhD candidate) comes from my expertise on shared mental models, decision support systems and hybrid intelligence.
Humans and AI designing the future in dialogue. The lab studies how designers work together right now. They don’t just speak, they sketch, they use objects, and communicate with gestures and gaze. We examine individual aspects of collaboration such as gaze, reflection, and conversational memory, and how they relate to the design process and outcome. The lab aims to make a social robot that can be part of the design process and can enhance the design process. My role in this project (as promotor for a PhD candidate) comes from my expertise on team work, co-active analysis and deliberation.
AI for fair, efficient, and interpretable policy analysis.
Equitable, accountable, and human-centered AI methods can improve distributive justice, interpretability and stakeholder engagement, and these are core objectives at the HIPPO Lab. The HIPPO Lab developes next generation, nature-inspired and hyper-heuristic optimisation methods – the methods that can capture conflicts across multiple sectors, regions and generations. We use AI-based decision support for addressing complex real-world problems such as climate change mitigation and adaptation. My role in this project (as promotor for a PhD candidate) comes from my expertise in negotiation, decision-support and deliberation.
The AiBLE Lab will investigate how AI can be developed and used in complex real-world scenarios. Our aim is to help reach effective, transparent and lasting decisions and agreements. We focus on two important built environment challenges: energy transition and circularity. By using AI to augment human intelligence and support negotiation continuously – while adapting to and driving human behaviour – the AiBLE Lab will close the policy-practice gap responsibly and inclusively. My role in this project (as promotor for a PhD candidate) comes from my expertise on negotiation and decision support.
This is a 20 million Euro “Gravitation” subsidy project granted by the NL Ministery of Education, Culture and Science to encourage excellent research in The Netherlands.
I am an affiliated researcher in ALGOSOC. This consortium investigates the impact of automated processes on human rights and public values.
Oncode-PACT is a project that aims to realize a self-sustainable drug development machine with the integration of state-of-the-art innovative technology platforms. The project is funded through the Growfund subsidy of The Netherlands. My research in this project is part of the management workpackage and focusses on the support of the collaboration in the consortium; to help the partners create a clear image of the interests, concerns and perspectives regarding this project. More information can be found on the project website.
RED&BLUE is a 5 Million Euro project funded in the NWA-ORC round of 2020/21.
Sea-level rise, land subsidence, extreme rain, and drought: climate change brings new risks for real estate and infrastructure, especially in urbanized, low-lying deltas. Our cities are valuable assets: as high-quality and inclusive places, as economic drivers, as investments. Adaptation to a changing climate is crucial to retain these diverse values, particularly for the most vulnerable. Transdisciplinary knowledge for climate resilient urban development is needed, but highly underdeveloped. This project brings investors, planners and managers of real estate and infrastructure and academics from relevant disciplines together to co-develop an integrative urban climate governance strategy for a resilient Dutch delta. I am a co-applicant and my research in the project focusses on developing Artificial intelligence techniques for supporting transdisciplinary dialogues on climate risk management.
This is a 20 million Euro “Gravitation” subsidy project granted by the NL Ministery of Education, Culture and Science to encourage excellent research in The Netherlands.
Hybrid Intelligence (HI) is the combination of human and machine intelligence, expanding human intellect instead of replacing it. HI takes human expertise and intentionality into account when making meaningful decisions and perform appropriate actions, together with ethical, legal and societal values. Our goal is to design Hybrid Intelligent systems, an approach to Artificial Intelligence that puts humans at the centre, changing the course of the ongoing AI revolution. This NWO Gravitation project was granted in 2019. As one of the co-principle investigators I am part of the Executive Board, furthermore I am one the board members and part of the HI Taskforce, and, of course I parttake in several PhD and PostDoc research projects that are part of HI. More information can be found on the project website.
This is a 20 million Euro “Gravitation” subsidy project granted by the NL Ministery of Education, Culture and Science to encourage excellent research in The Netherlands.
Technological innovations such as artificial intelligence, robotics, synthetic biology, nanomedicine, next-generation genomics, neurotechnology and geo-engineering have the potential to radically alter everyday life, cultural practices and social and economic institutions. Societal disruption may well be necessary and desirable for responding to pressing global problems such as climate change and depletion of natural resources. But the technologies also raise tough moral questions that are in need of ethical evaluation. They may affect the basic concepts and values underlying our ethical thinking. This project seeks to realize the reflective turn in the ethics of technology essential for an ethical integration of the technologies in our society. I am a co-applicant of this project and am co-instigator of the strong tie between the Esdit and HI projects. More information can be found on the project website.
The overall aim of this VIDI project of Birna van Riemsdijk is to develop a reasoning framework that combines logic and quantitative techniques for Socially Adaptive Electronic Partners (SAEPs) that adapt their behavior to norms and values of people. This becomes more and more important as technology becomes an integral part of our daily lives. The computational reasoning techniques are aimed at determining when and to what extent norm-compliance can be guaranteed, and deciding what to do if in exceptional situations a norm cannot or should not be complied with.
This is a project that focuses on building a Virtual Reality therapy system that facilitates treatment. The patients have to interact with avatars in a virtual world. Our role in the project is part of the effort to make the experience real. To increase presence, the avatar has to respond appropriately and fast. This is facilitated by two main components: behaviour recognition and behaviour generation. We focus on behaviour recognition. Multiple modalities are used for the behaviour recognition component, such as audio, kinect and physiological data, to predict negative arousal and aggressive tendencies.
Research theme: How can heterogeneous resources (people, mobile sensors, fixed sensors, social media, information systems, …) self-organize for answering information needs? My contribution is in the field of negotiation and of organisation-aware agents.
The M2M Internet for dynamic M2M Information Business ecosystem. Our contribution in that project focuses on multi-party negotation, where we study protocols, bidding and search heuristics and human-in-the-loop automated negotations.
A EU project to create a High-volume Fusion and Analysis Platform for Geospatial Point Clouds, Coverages and Volumetric Data Sets. Our contribution focuses on human-computer interaction. We employ value-sensitive design methods and focus group interviews to support the design of IQmulus.
Dog Cognition is a topic of research that arose from my passion for dogs and science. When Arjen van Alphen from De Roedelmethode said he could predict how my dog would perform a task based on paw the dog departed with to perform the task, he sparked the unquenchable thirst to see scientific evidence and to find out more. This research is driven by me with the help of self-funded research trainees. Participation requires a keen interest in an alien intelligence that has been living close to us humans for many thousands of years and an aptitude for formalisations and simulations.
is a line of research that studies what human and artificial actors should know about each other to get the best experience and task performance. A research questions is, how to formalize that knowledge in what is known as shared mental models. A related question is how to quantifiably measure sharedness and develop agents that work to improve sharedness.
