Research professor
October 2024 - ...
DTAI lab of KU Leuven
Personal Profile
I'm a research professor in the Declarative Languages and Artificial Intelligence section of the KU Leuven. My research interests are spread throughout the field of knowledge representation. They range from high-level representation languages to performance optimisations in SAT, from abstract, algebraical frameworks to unify semantics of logics to implementation of knowledge base systems, from applications of KR to integration of declarative problem solving paradigms,... My current focus is developing mechanisms that instill trust in solving technology by means of proofs. This is the core topic of my ERC grant.
I am also partially affiliated to the AI lab of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).
Experience
Assistant/Associate professor
October 2018 - ...
AI lab of the VUB
Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO)
October 2016 - September 2019
Postdoctoral researcher
2015 - 2016
Computational logic group of Aalto university
Postdoctoral researcher
2015
KRR group of the KU Leuven
PhD researcher
2011 - 2015
Advisors: Prof. dr. Marc Denecker, Prof. dr. Joost Vennekens and Prof. dr. Jan Van den Bussche
Collaboration between the
Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KRR) group of the
KU Leuven and the databases & theoretical computer science group of Hasselt University & transnational University of Limburg
Self-employed as secondary activity
2009 - 2011
Tutoring in mathematics, physics and informatics.
Teaching
Knowledge Representation and Reasoning
2023 - 2025
Lecturer
Theory of Computation
2021 - 2024
Lecturer
Scientific Computing
2021 - 2024
Lecturer
Discrete Modeling, Optimization, and Search
2019 - 2024
Lecturer
Algorithms and Data Structures 2
2019 - 2024
Lecturer
Fundamentals of Computer Science
2019 - 2021
Lecturer
Automata and Computability
2018 - 2021
Lecturer
Databases
2016 - 2018
Lecturer
Discrete models and search
2015 - 2016
Lecturer
Advanced Programming Languages for Artificial Intelligence
2016 - 2018
Teaching assistant
Modelling of Complex Systems
2011 - 2015; 2016 - 2017
Teaching assistant
Selected Talks
Combinatorial Solving with Provably Correct Results 
February 20, 2024, Vancouver, Canada
Tutorial at The 38th Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2024)
Combinatorial Solving with Provably Correct Results
August 20, 2023, Macao, S.A.R.
Tutorial at the 32nd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI)
Certified Static and Dynamic Symmetry Breaking 
April 20, 2023, Simons Institute, UC Berkeley, USA
Combinatorial Solving with Provably Correct Results
November 29, 2022, University of Copenhagen, Denmark (Virtual)
On Symmetries and Certification
October 13, 2022, Schloss Dagstuhl, Germany
Dagstuhl seminar on Theory and Practice of SAT and Combinatorial Solving
Solving with Provably Correct Results: Beyond Satisfiability, and Towards Constraint Programming
August 2, 2022, Haifa, Israel
The IDP System: What and Why?
October 25, 2021, Virtual Conference
A framework for step-wise explaining how to solve constraint satisfaction problems
April 24, 2021, Simons Institute, UC Berkeley, California, USA
Step-Wise Explanations for Constraint Satisfaction (and Optimization?)
September 7, 2020, Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium.
Approximation Fixpoint Theory and its Application to Knowledge Representation
Januari 15, 2019, Leipzig, Germany.
Symmetry Exploitation for Combinatorial Problems
November 6, 2017, Stockholm, Sweden.
Propagators and Solvers for the Algebra of Modular Systems
October 17, 2016, New York, USA.
International Workshop on Logic and Search (Lash 2016)
Lazy Model Expansion: Interleaving Grounding with Search
July 18, 2014, Vienna, Austria.
International Workshop on Logic and Search (Lash 2014)
Awards and Prices
2019 Holy Grail Challenge
First place
2016 QBFEval
Prenex CNF: Second place
2016 SAT Competition
No Limits Track: First place
2013 SAT Competition
Core Solvers, Sequential, Hard-combinatorial SAT+UNSAT: First place
Core Solvers, Sequential, Hard-combinatorial SAT: Third place
PhD Students
Maxime Jakubowski
May 2024, Joint PhD UHasselt-VUB
Shapes Constraint Language: Formalization, Expressiveness, and Provenance
Emilio Gamba
May 2024, Joint PhD VUB-KU Leuven
Step-Wise Explanations for Constraint Solving
Simon Marynissen
January 2022, Joint PhD KU Leuven-VUB
Advances in Justification Theory
Software
I have (co)-authored the following software: ZebraTutor, IDP3, MinisatID, BreakID, so2grounder, SmsControl.