Name: Dr. Werner Van Belle
e-mail: werner@sigtrans.org, werner.van.belle@gmail.com
Webpage: http://werner.sigtrans.org/
Address: Entenweidstrasse 4, CH-4056 Basel, Switzerland
Phone: Work: (+41) 61 387 31 91
Date of birth: 21 June 1975
Place of birth: Anderlecht, Belgium
Nationality: Belgian
Marital Status: Not married
Military Service: None; not obligatory in Belgium since
1975
Drivers License: B (cars and small motorcycles). No practice
since 1995
Languages: Dutch & English
My expertise lies in three distinct areas: a) bioinformatics (detailed in section 4.1.4, 4.1.2, 4.1.3 & 4.1.1), b) signal processing (detailed in section 4.2.1, 4.2.2, 4.1.4 & 4.1.3) and c) distributed systems (detailed in section 4.3.4, 4.3.3, 4.3.2 & 4.3.1);. My education summarized by the dissertations,
| Employer | Group | Position | Start Date  End Date |
Time
VUB |
Abbreviations: VUB = Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Brussels University); UiTø = University of Tromsø; UNN = University Hospital of Northern Norway; BSSE = Department for Biosystems Science and Engineering
From March 2008 to March 2009 I was responsible for setting up a primary analysis pipeline for the Deep Sequencing Facility in Basel. This included various aspects among which understanding the Illumina software but also administrative issues such as sample tracking and data delivery. In the end, this project was at an impasse. With on one side an IT department that refused to do what we needed (making backups, installing web servers and installing databases was 'not their job') and on another side a research department that did not see the need for an official software project because they did not want to understand the basic steps of software engineering: requirement analysis, system design, implementation, validation etc. This part of the work was highly unrewarding, even to the point that I left the DBSSE entirely.
A second aspect of my work at DBSSE was research on how to analyze genomic signal track and how to find useful relations between these tracks. To this end I tested a number of novel approaches on Human Histone Methylation and Acetylation patterns. This was very interesting and offered a number of novel insights.
In connection with the Virology department of the University Of Tromso, I investigated the measurement accuracy of the microarray facility. This resulted in the development of a new technique in which confidence intervals on all the measured dots are reported. This information was further used to integrate a protein interaction map and predict which proteins are likely influenced by/will likely influence MK5.
In connection with Haukeland University Hospital (Bergen) we investigated P53 (a protein related to cell life and death and its gene is often mutated in cancer). We received bio-signatures of P53 expression for various leukemia patients and got the challenge to analyse these. First we needed to remove various artifacts from the images, including camera geometry artifacts, washing and drying effects, scratches, bubbles, light conditions and translational, rotational and zooming variances. In this research we developed a novel denoising technique. Afterwards, alignment was necessary and the analysis of the actual data. This led to a novel analysis technique that is being patented.
MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry is a well known and widely used technique to fingerprint and sequence proteins. However widely used, the signal output of these machines often contain disturbing artifacts such as static tones, linearly up-sweeping tones, exponentially decaying tones and probabilistic pulse trains. Their presence reduces the accuracy of peak localization and might introduce phantom peaks. This further complicates a) automatic selection of peaks, b) makes it impossible to normalize mass spectrogram's and c) in general reduces the performance of high throughput proteomics. We developed a) a number of specialized algorithms to remove these artifacts, based on wavelets, and b) a number of techniques to automatically assign confidence scores to peaks, based on auto-correlation techniques and machine modelling. The combination of the presented techniques allow for an accurate and automated sample analysis, which in turn helps in the determination of the sample content.
In 2001 I created a fully automatic BPM counter to measure the tempo of music. This is done by autocorrelation, which in itself is not a new technique, however at that moment the use of this technique to measure the tempo was entirely new. Over the years this program has been extended to recognize sound spectra, rhythmical information, ambiance and compositional information. This allows the program to automatically select matching songs, cluster them and visualize them using a PCA analysis. More information can be found at http://bpmdj.sourceforge.net/. The current modules include
Tempo module - Five different tempo measurement techniques are available of which auto-correlation and ray-shooting are most appropriate. All analyzers in BpmDj make use of the Bark psycho-acoustic scale. The spectrum or sound color is visualized as a 3 channel color (red/green/blue) based on a Karhunen-Loéve transform of the available songs.
Echo/delay Modules - Measuring the echo characteristics is based on a distribution analysis of the frequency content of the music and then enhancing it using a differential auto-correlation.
Rhythm/composition modules - Rhythm and composition properties
rely on correct tempo information. Rhythm relies on cross correlation
and overlaying of all available measures. Composition relies on measuring
the probability of a composition change after 
measures.
From an end-user point of view the program supports distributed analysis, automatic mixing of music, distance metrics for all analyzers as well as clustering and automatic classification based on this information. Everything is tied together in a Qt based user interface.
Cryosleep is a program that generates soothing brainwaves relying on the bi-aural effect. I developed this from 2003 to 2005 and has proven to be a very popular download. The value of the program comes both from its unique noise shaped frequency spectrum (the sounds are very 'friendly' to listen to) and its free availability at http://werner.onlinux.be/Cryosleep. Cryosleep relies on a power-law to alternate the composition and on the bark psycho-acoustic scale for frequency selection.
In 2006 I became involved with ship to shore protocols -or- how to solve very practical network problems with the following requirements: a) the off-boat interface can change at any time, but the internal network needs to stay fully connected b) how to bring up/down outgoing links; c) how to control incoming and outgoing connections based on current cost-rate and d) how to install a least cost routing engine on such a router ? To approach this problem we investigated NuFw, IPv6 and Mobile IP.
From 2001 to 2003 I wrote my PhD, a monograph titled ``Creation of an Intelligent Concurrency Adaptor in order to mediate the Differences between Conflicting Concurrency Interfaces''. It contained 14 distinct chapters, of which 10 standing independent. The full text is available on my homepage. In summary, I investigated a particular problem of open distributed systems namely: concurrency management between components written by different manufacturers. All too often, the concurrency-strategy provided or required by a component is badly documented and rarely matches the concurrency strategy provided or required by other components. Whenever this happens there is a concurrency interface conflict. Solving such conflicts can require a substantial amount of manpower, especially because in open distributed systems components can be updated without prior notification and without guarantees that new interfaces are backward compatible. Concurrency behavior modifications can range from syntactic modifications over slight semantic differences to completely new concurrency strategies. For example, changing a nested locking strategy to a non-nested locking strategy or changing a non-blocking server to work in a blocking manner.
I approached the presented problem by automatically generating a concurrency interface adaptor between various provided an required concurrency behaviors. This process required the formal documentation of the involved concurrency interface by means of colored Petri-nets. Once these are available, a concurrency adaptor is deployed in two stages. The first stage learns how to reach various check points in both the server code and client code, thereby bypassing the concurrency behavior entirely. Then the second stage observe the requested state in the client and realizes it in the server by linking together the common functional Petri-net places (a functional place is one not related to the concurrency strategy).
I have been fully involved in the SEESCOA project, which stands for ``Software Engineering for Embedded Systems using a Component Oriented Approach''. The project ran from October 1999 till September 2003. 4 academic partners were involved: 1) the VUB (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) with PROG ('Programming Technology Lab') and SELL (Laboratory for Software engineering). 2) the PARIS research group of the RUG ('Rijks Univeristeit Gent'). 3) the DISTRINET research group of the KUL (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) and 4) the EDM Research group ('Expertise for digital media') of the LUC ('Limburgs Universitair Centrum').
The IWT funded the main chunk of the project with 2 mil EUR. 6 industrial partners were involved. These were: Siemens, Barco-Graphics, Agfa Gevaert, Imec, Philips and Alcatel. Key points of this period:
During 4 years I've been the creator and maintainer of the Borg mobile multi agent system. We viewed a mobile multi-agent as a standalone component that can communicate with other agents and migrate between places (processors). Our research aimed to conceive a distributed system and language that would allow the development of such mobile agents, without presenting the agent programmer with non functional aspects such as connection establishment, fault tolerance and so on.
During this time I researched which distribution aspects one can hide (at an acceptable price) and which ones not. In the end we were able to shield the programmer from finding the communication partners. We provided transparent communication, location transparent migration and transparent replication. We were unable to hide concurrency management (due to its inherent complexity). Therefore we developed a set of control flow modules that abstrahate around typical usage scenarios (whiteboard communication, one-to-many, many-to-one and voting patterns). Later on, this led to the applicability of Petri-nets as a modeling technique.
The Borg mobile multi agent system uses the educational language Pico as its basis. It was developed by my former adviser and due its proper memory and stack discipline enabled strong migration already in 1998. Key-points of this period:
* is the corresponding author. 
are equal contributors.
For a list of publications that excludes the abstracts, see the file 'CV-full'.
1. Nancy Gerits
, Werner Van Belle, Ugo Moens; Transgenic mice expressing constitutive active MAPKAPK5 display gender-dependent differences in exploration and activity; Behavioral and Brain Functions; Biomed Central; Editor(s) Terje Sagvolden; volume 3; nr 58; November 2007
Background: The mitogen-activated protein kinases, MAPKs for short, constitute cascades of signalling pathways involved in the regulation of several cellular processes that include cell proliferation, differentiation and motility. They also intervene in neurological processes like fear conditioning and memory. Since little remains known about the MAPK-Activated Protein Kinase, MAPKAPK5, we constructed the first MAPKAPK knockin mouse model, using a constitutive active variant of MAPKAPK5 and analysed the resulting mice for changes in anxiety-related behaviour. Methods: We performed primary SHIRPA observations during background breeding into the C57BL/6 background and assessed the behaviour of the background-bred animals on the elevated plus maze and in the light-dark test. Our results were analysed using Chi-square tests and homo- and heteroscedatic T-tests; Results: Female transgenic mice displayed increased amounts of head dips and open arm time on the maze, compared to littermate controls. In addition, they also explored further into the open arm on the elevated plus maze and were less active in the closed arm compared to littermate controls. Male transgenic mice displayed no differences in anxiety, but their locomotor activity increased compared to non-transgenic littermates; Conclusions: Our results revealed anxiety-related traits and locomotor differences between transgenic mice expressing constitutive active MAPKAPK5 and control littermates.
2. Werner Van Belle
, Nancy Gerits, Kirsti Jakobsen, Vigdis Brox, Marijke Van Ghelue, Ugo Moens; Confidence Intervals on Microarray Measurement of Differentially Expressed Genes: A Case Study on the effects of MK5, TAF4 and FKRP on the transcriptome; Gene Regulation and Systems Biology; Libertas Academus Press; nr 1; pages 57-72; May 2007
To perform a quantitative analysis with gene-arrays, one must take into account inaccuracies (experimental variations, biological variations and other measurement errors) which are seldomly known. In this paper we investigated amplification and noise propagation related errors by measuring intensity dependent variations. Based on a set of control samples, we create confidence intervals on up and down regulations. We validated our method through a qPCR experiment and compared it to standard analysis methods (including loess normalization and filtering methods based on genetic variability). The results reveal that experimental variability and amplification related errors are a major concern that should be accounted for.
3. Werner Van Belle
, Jessie Dedecker
; Ambient Actors as a Formalism for Ubiquitous and Mobile Computing; Handbook for Ubiquitous and Mobile Computing; American Scientific Publishers; October 2006
Networks formed by the interconnection of mobile wireless devices are often called mobile ad-hoc networks. Such networks are highly volatile because communication partners can move in and out of range. This leads to unwanted interruptions of communication sessions, which in turn complicates the development of software that relies on a long term distributed state. Standard solutions seem inadequate because all too often they assume an inherent client server role or they assume a bound latency on communication sessions. One cannot make such assumptions in mobile ad-hoc networks. In order to resolve this matter a programming model must support the ability to pick up previous communication sessions; it must remember the devices/resources it has seen in the past; and it must provide a realistic approach towards concurrency, taking into account the limitations of a peer to peer ad-hoc network. This article presents the ambient actor model which extends the operational semantics of the actor model to capture the limitations posed by this novel paradigm
4. Werner Van Belle
; Dj-ing under Linux with Bpmdj; Linux+ Magazine; nr 25; October 2006
BpmDj provides the digital DJ with QT based tools to analyze, manage and play mp3/ogg songs. The program annotates all songs with psychoacoustic properties, including tempo, sound color, echo/delay information, rhythm information and composition information. The program relies on mplayer, ogg123 and/or mpg123 to decode songs while output is send through alsa or oss drivers. This article demonstrates beatmixing (how a DJ can superimpose two songs during longer times) and automixing (how BpmDj can mix music for you). It further sheds some light on the psychoacoustic properties used and a feature called beatgraphs.
5. Werner Van Belle
, Gry Sjøholt, Nina Ånensen, Kjell-Arild Høgda, Bjørn Tore Gjertsen; Adaptive contrast enhancement of two-dimensional electrophoretic protein gel images facilitates visualization, orientation and alignment; Electrophoresis; Wiley Interscience Vch; volume 27; nr 20; pages 4086-4095; October 2006
Two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2-DE) is a powerful technique to discriminate post-translationally modified protein isoforms. However, all steps of 2-DE preparation and gel-staining may introduce unwanted artefacts, including inconsistent variation of background intensity over the entire 2-DE gel image. Background intensity variations limit the accuracy of gel orientation, overlay alignment and spot detection methods. We present a compact and efficient denoising algorithm that adaptively enhances the image contrast and then, through thresholding and median filtering, removes the gray-scale range covering the background. Applicability of the algorithm is demonstrated on immuno-blots, isotope labeled gels, and protein stained gels. Validation is performed in contexts of i) automatic gel orientation based on Hough transformation, ii) overlay alignment based on cross correlation and iii) spot detection. In gel-stains with low background variability, e.g. Sypro Ruby, denoising will lower the spot detection sensitivity. In gel regions with high background levels denoising enhances spot detection. We propose that the denoising algorithm prepares images with high background for further automatic analysis, without requiring manual input on a gel-to-gel basis.
6. Nina Ånensen, Ingvild Haaland, Clive D'Santos, Werner Van Belle, Bjørn Tore Gjertsen
; Proteomics of p53 in Diagnostics and Therapy of Acute Myeloid Leukemia; Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology; Bentham Science Publishers Ltd.; volume 7; nr 3; July 2006
The anti-oncogene TP53 is frequently mutated in human cancer, but in hematological malignancies this is a rare feature. In acute myeloid leukemia (AML) more than 90% of the patients comprise wild type TP53 in their cancer cells, but if TP53 is mutated or deleted the disease is often found to be chemoresistant. In this review we define proteomics of the oncogene product p53 as the study of proteins in the p53 regulating signaling networks, as well as the protein study of members of the p53 family itself. Various messenger RNA splice forms as well as a multitude of posttranslational modifications give a high number of protein isoforms in the p53 family. Some of the proteomic techniques allow detection of various isoforms, such as two-dimensional gel electrophoresis in combination with tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) and this methodology may therefore increasingly be used as a diagnostic tool in human disease. We introduce the p53 protein as an illustration of the complexity of post-translational modifications that may affect one highly connected protein and discuss the possible impact in AML diagnostics if the p53 profile is reflecting cell stress and status of signal transduction systems of the malignancy
7. Werner Van Belle
, Nina Ånensen, Ingvild Haaland, Oystein Bruserud, Kjell-Arild Høgda, Bjørn Tore Gjertsen; Correlation analysis of two-dimensional gel electrophoretic protein patterns and biological variables; BMC Bioinformatics; volume 7; nr 198; April 2006
Background) Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2DE) is a powerful technique to examine post-translational modifications of complexly modulated proteins. Currently, spot detection is a necessary step to assess relations between spots and biological variables. This often proves time consuming and difficult when working with non-perfect gels. We developed an analysis technique to measure correlation between 2DE images and biological variables on a pixel by pixel basis. After image alignment and normalization, the biological parameters and pixel values are replaced by their specific rank. These rank adjusted images and parameters are then put into a standard linear Pearson correlation and further tested for significance and variance. Results) We validated this technique on a set of simulated 2DE images, which revealed also correct working under the presence of normalization factors. This was followed by an analysis of p53 2DE immunoblots from cancer cells, known to have unique signaling networks. Since p53 is altered through these signaling networks, we expected to find correlations between the cancer type (acute lymphoblastic leukemia and acute myeloid leukemia) and the p53 profiles. A second correlation analysis revealed a more complex relation between the differentiation stage in acute myeloid leukemia and p53 protein isoforms. Conclusion) The presented analysis method measures relations between 2DE images and external variables without requiring spot detection, thereby enabling the exploration of biosignatures of complex signaling networks in biological systems.
8. Werner Van Belle
, Bjørn Tore Gjertsen; Correlation Determination System: P53 Correlations; Submitted as a patent application; Editor(s) Frank B. Dehn; April 2006
A technique I used to analyze 2DE gels is currently being patented by TTO Nord AS (Technology Transfer Office). The patent application is filed in Great Brittain with application number 59.90777.214. I believe that this patent should not be claimed because: a) it is a mathematical technique b) there is no 'innovative step' involved (correlation is not new) and c) the patent content has been presented at many public fora before it was filed. Contact me for detailed information if necessary.
9. Werner Van Belle
, Olav Mjaavatten; Artefacts in the Mass Spectra Output from MALDI-TOF and MALDI-TOF/TOF Machines; Proceeding of the VIIth International Symposium of the Protein Society section proteomics, interactomics and protein networks; April 2005
MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry is a well known and widely used technique to fingerprint and sequence proteins. A carefull investigation of the mass spectra output from unnamed machines shows a number of artefacts produced by the machines themselves. Because these artefacts complicate a number of procedures we present a number of preliminary techniques we developed to get rid of most of the artefacts.
10. Jessie Dedecker
, Werner Van Belle
; Actors for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (The Ambient Actor Model); Proceedings of Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing (EUC2004); Springer Verlag; Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS 3207); Editor(s) Aizu-Wakamatsu; pages 482-494; August 2004
Wireless communication has a limited communication range which introduces two major problems, currently not captured in distributed middleware. First, they are less reliable than their wired variants and secondly they are extremely dynamic. Both problems complicate the development of mobile software. In this paper we extend the operational semantics of the actor model to capture these two properties. We do this by adding a single new concept to the model: the mailbox. This paper provides a foundation for new implementations of the actor language and frameworks that are usable in the context of wireless network environments.
11. Jessie Dedecker
, Werner Van Belle, Wolfgang De Meuter; Actors for Pervasive Computing; Proceeding of the workshop on reference architectures and patterns for pervasive computing (OOPSLA2003); June 2003
The position we defend in this paper is that asynchronous communication patterns are to be considered to be the main communication paradigm in pervasive applications and that the actor model, which relies on such a form of communication, needs extenstion to be practical useful.
12. Werner Van Belle
, Tom Mens, Theo D'Hondt; Using Genetic Programming to Generate Protocol Adaptors for Interprocess Communication; Evolvable Systems: From Biology to Hardware, Proceedings of the 5th Intl. Conference on Evolvable Systems (ICES2003); Springer Verlag: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS 2606); Editor(s) Andy M. Tyrrel and Pauline C. Haddow and Jim Torresen; pages 422-433; March 2003
As mobile devices become more powerful, interprocess communication becomes increasingly more important. Unfortunately, this larger freedom of mobility gives rise to unknown environments. In these environments, processes that want to communicate with each other will be unable to do so because of protocol conflicts. Although conflicting protocols can be remedied by using adaptors, the number of possible combinations of different protocols increases dramatically. Therefore we propose a technique to generate protocol adaptors automatically. This is realised by means of genetically engineered classifier systems that use Petri nets as a specification for the underlying protocols. This paper reports on an experiment that validates this approach.
13. Werner Van Belle
, Karsten Verelst, Kristof Van Buggenhout, Theo D'Hondt; Is Message Sending Good enough for Distributed Systems ? Communication and synchronisation revisited; Accepted for publication in the proceedings of the Distributed Object Workshop at the European Conference on Object Oriented Programming 2001 (ECOOP 2001); June 2001
This position paper looks at current day distributed object systems. In most of these systems we see a basic building primitive which offers us the needed distribution capabilities. Most of the time this is a synchronous or asynchronous message send. We argue that this is not good enough for distributed systems. Choosing the 'message-send' as primitive operation creates too many problems and creates the illusion that writing distributed programs is as easy as 'calling an object'. This is not true. In this paper we would like to present our ideas about this and hope to provoke some discussion about them.
14. Werner Van Belle
, Johan Fabry, Karsten Verelst, Theo D'Hondt; Experiences in Mobile Computing: The CBorg Mobile Multi-Agent System; Technology of Object-Oriented Languages and Systems (TOOLS 38): Components for Mobile Computing; IEEE Computer Society Press; Los Alamitos, California; Editor(s) Wolfgang Pree; pages 7-18; March 2001
This paper reports on our experiences in the field of mobile components. In the past 4 years we developed a mobile component system, which allowed us to experiment with code mobility in distributed systems. These experiments have given us a unique opportunity to study two major issues in mobile component systems. The first issue is how to develop and provide a robust mobile component architecture. The second issue is how to write code in these kinds of systems. This paper discusses our experience in both of the above.
15. Werner Van Belle
, Karsten Verelst, Theo D'Hondt; The CBorg Mobile Multi-Agent System; Edited Volume on Infrastructures for Large-Scale Multi-Agent Systems; ACM; October 2000
This paper describes the design behind an experimental mobile multi agent system we have built over the past 4 years. The architecture itself is called Cborg. The objective was to create an architecture which can be easily used to implement intelligent autonomous agents in a wide area network.
16. Stefan Van Baelen
, David Urting, Werner Van Belle, Viviane Jonckers, Tom Holvoet, Yolande Berbers, Karel De Vlaminck; Towards a unified terminology for component-based development; Submitted to ECOOP 2000; June 2000
Component-oriented programming and component-based development have become rather mature software development approaches in the last years, with both quite good conceptual and technological support. In spite of this rapid growth, the concepts used when talking about components are not always well-defined and can lead to misconception, misunderstanding and confusion. Although the general, abstract definition of a component, as defined at WCOP96: A software component is a unit of composition with contractually specified interfaces and explicit context dependencies only. A software component can be deployed independently and is subject to composition by third parties. is widely accepted, a lot of confusion can arise when characteristics of components are described.
17. Werner Van Belle
, Theo D'Hondt; Agent mobility and Reification of Computational State; International Proceedings of Infrastructures for Agents, Multi-Agent Systems and Scalable Multi-Agent Systems; Springer Verlag; Lecture Notes in Artifical Intelligence (LNAI 1887); Editor(s) Tom Wagner and Omer Rana; pages 166-173; June 2000
This paper describes an experiment with mobility in multi-agent systems. The setting is a virtual machine that supports reification of the computational state of a running process. The objective is to investigate how this feature facilitates telescripting and to speculate on how languages like Java should evolve to include the resulting notion of strong migration.
18. Werner Van Belle
, Karsten Verelst, Theo D'Hondt; Location Transparent Routing in Mobile Agent Systems - Merging Name Lookups with Routing; 7th IEEE Workshop on Future Trends of Distributed Computing Systems; IEEE Computer Society Press; Los Alamitos, California; Editor(s) A. Denise Williams; pages 207-212; December 1999
Telecommunication systems these days are moving from static wide area component structures towards highly dynamic mobile infrastructures. This shift requires new algorithms to interconnect these mobile entities/components and route messages between them. In this paper we describe a naming and routing algorithm which can be used in fine-grained mobile component systems. As a case we use a homogenous environment of mobile multi-agent systems, which executes agents as they pass by.
19. Wolfgang De Meuter
, Kris De Volder, Werner Van Belle, Tom Tourwe, Theo D'Hondt; Prototype Based agents for the Web; Proceedings of the European Conference on Object Oriented Programming 1997 (ECOOP 1997), workshop on Prototype-Based Object-Oriented Programming; September 1997
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1. Werner Van Belle
; An Adaptive Filter for the Correct Localization of Subimages: FFT based Subimage Localization Requires Image Normalization to work properly; Signal Processing; Yellowcouch Scientific; 11 pages; October 2007
How to find subimages with the fast fourier transform ? It is well documented how Fourier transforms can speed up image alignment. The cross-correlation of an image can be calculated as the inverse Fourier transform of the inproduct of the Fourier transform of the first image and the conjugated Fourier transform of the second image. However, when one tries to extend this useful relation to locate subimages in larger images we find that it no longer performs properly. In this document we describe a fast normalization method that makes it possible to use the standard Fourier based cross-correlation technique for subimage localization. The technique relies on a low pass filtering followed by an adaptive contrast enhancement.
2. Werner Van Belle
; Correlation between the inproduct and the sum of absolute differences is -0.8485 for uniform sampled signals on [-1:1]; Signal Processing; Yellowcouch Scientific; November 2006
While investigating relations between various comparators and the inproduct we found that the inproduct correlates strongly towards the absolute difference when the domain from which the values are taken come from a uniform distribution on [-1:1]. This useful relation might help to speed up block comparison in content databases and can be used as a valuable tool to estimate the inproduct based on the absolute difference and vice versa
3. Werner Van Belle
; Antenna Finding and Interpolation/Extrapolation of Signal Strength; November 2006
This article investigates the possibility to determine the position of a WiFi antenna by sampling the environment using a standard wireless card. The method is based on a search algorithm (simulated annealing) in a renormalized antenna model. The article further documents a sample acquisition phase in which a static wireless card measured the local environment. This might allow the integration of various oscillatory phenomena into the model.
4. Werner Van Belle
; Observations on spectrum and spectrum histograms in BpmDj; September 2005
BpmDj Is a program for DJ's. It helps to select songs and play them. To achieve this the program relies on a number of signal processing techniques. One of the available techniques compares song spectra. Both a standard spectrum analysis is performed as well as a distribution analysis ('echo' characteristics). In this short article we describe how this property is calculated and how it is further used in song comparison. We also present a short analysis of the structure of the space using correlation techniques.
5. Werner Van Belle
; BPM Measurement of Digital Audio by Means of Beat Graphs & Ray Shooting; October 2004
In this paper we present a) a novel audio visualization technique, called beat-graphs and b) a fully automatic algorithm to measure the mean tempo of a song with a very high accuracy. The algorithm itself is an easy implementable offline search algorithm that looks for the tempo that best describes the song. For every investigated tempo, it steps through the song and compares the similarity of consecutive pieces of information (bass drum, a hi-hat, ...). Its accuracy is two times higher than other fully automatic techniques, including Fourier analysis, envelope-spectrum analysis and autocorrelation.
6. Werner Van Belle
; The Failure of the Connectionless Model and the Vice Software Model; February 2004
We investigate a number of modularity problems that arise from using a connection-less software model. A connection-less approach leads naturally to an unmanaged use of direct references. This results in crucial software composition complications such as the inability to replace objects, difficulties to track outgoing messages, difficulties in writing glue-codehidden communication. As a solution to these problems, we present our connection oriented software model, Vice. Its reflective design makes that it surpasses existing architectures in its modularity, manageability and performance.
7. Karsten Verelst
, Werner Van Belle, Theo D'Hondt; The Reflective Virtual Machine; June 2001
We claim that current day reflective architectures do not offer sufficient functionality, and that new developments in computer science push us towards a stronger reflective model: reflective virtual machines. We have witnessed these shortcomings in the application domain of mobility. Strong mobility is very difficult to implement in today's programming languages, mainly because of the inability to capture the program's computational state. Therefore we propose a new reflective architecture, the reflective virtual machine, that offers sufficient support for applications in mobility. In this paper we will first describe the basic functionality a mobile agentplatform should offer. This shall be done using a solution to the malicious host problem as a case. After identifying these needs we will introduce an interpreter, the Reflective Virtual Machine, that offers sufficient reflection, so that mobile applications can be straightforwardly implemented.
8. Karsten Verelst
, Werner Van Belle, Theo D'Hondt; Communication & Synchronization in Mobile Multi-Agent Systems, CSP Revisited; Submitted to workshop 23 at ECOOP 2000; March 2000
We have created a communication model by extending an imperative language with 4 simple communication primitives. It turns out that these four primitives are very versatile and cover a large portion of existing communication protocols such as CSP and Actor systems. Our communication model offers both synchronous and asynchronous communication in an easy-to-use communication model. This is achieved by extending an imperative language with 4 communication primitives. Because we desire asynchronous means of communication, our main communication primitives, send and receive, both work asynchronous. We have also included a sync-primitive that synchronizes two processes, and thus synchronous communication can be simulated. The fourth primitive, newagent, is used to create new agents. In this document we first introduce these communication primitives with the help of some examples. Next we give an example that demonstrates the use of our communication model. This example already gives a hint of the great expressive power of our communication language and in the last part of this document we show that our communication model can simulate the behaviour of more well-known protocols, such as CSP, Pi-calculus, actor-systems, RMI and others.
9. Werner Van Belle
; Reinforcement Learning as a Routing Technique for Mobile Multi Agent Systems; June 1998
Nowadays, a number of mobile multi agent systems are designed and implemented at a variety of research labs. Most of these systems suffer from a major problem: location transparency. Most systems do not implement this, and the few of them which do are not robust towards changes in the network topology and/or absolutely imperformant in wide area networks. In this paper we present a naming scheme and a location transparent routing algorithm, based upon reinforced Q learning, which is robust and performant.
1. Werner Van Belle
; (Ortholog) Mapping the Applied Biosystems Human/Mouse Survey v2.0 Micro-arrays to Ensembl Gene Identifiers; Bioinformatics; Yellowcouch Scientific; 23 pages; May 2007
This document describes cross joining of gene tables between Celera's mouse genome identifiers, Celera human genome identifiers and the more useful Ensembl identifiers. The context in which this research is set are the genes FKRP and TAF4. By using siRNA's we interfered with the transcription and measured their effect upon the transcriptome. The Applied Biosystems 1700 micro-array scanner measured and reported the transcription quantities. Two micro-array types were used: the human genome survey v2.0 micro-arrays and the mouse genome survey v2.0 micro-arrays. Based on the different micro-array measurements we wanted to predict which proteins would be influenced in a cell system if we know the up/down regulation of the measured probes. To this end we wanted to use the human protein interaction map (as defines by Rual'06), which uses Ensembl annotated genes. This of course formed a major problem. First, the Applied Biosystems scanner does not export Ensembl gene annotations. Secondly, the human protein interaction map might not be a good model for a mouse micro-array, so we needed to go through various orthologs. This document tells two stories: first, and most annoyingly: how to get Ensembl identifiers into an Applied Biosystems micro-array. Secondly, and slightly more interesting, how to retrieve a mouse to human ortholog mapping from Ensembl.
2. Werner Van Belle
; Correlations: P53 Isoform Biosignatures vs Biomedical Parameters; 93 Gb; February 2007
This deliverable compares 132 various biological parameters agains P53 ISoforms on 2D Gels of AML and ALL Patients.
3. Werner Van Belle
; Ship to Shore Communication; DUALOG Deliverable; 30 pages; August 2006
This document describes the possible problems of developing a realtime ship to shore IP4 connection over various media such as satelite links and wifi antennas. It focuses mainly on a Linux based solution.
4. Werner Van Belle
; Stepwise Tempo Changes in BpmDj; May 2006
kbpm-play provides an algorithm that automatically changes the play-rate from its current speed back to normal speed. A first version of the software relied on a linear change of pace, which turned out to be slightly wrong. In this short article we describe what went wrong and how to do it right.
5. Werner Van Belle
; Component Oriented Design of the SEESCOA Common Test Case: The Controller and Zoom Behaviour; SEESCOA Deliverable 3.5; 10 of 126 pages; October 2001
This document describes the design of two components in the seescoa component system: the controller (or directory service, responsible for interconnecting most components) and the zoom behavior, responsible for providing linkage between the behaviour of two or more cameras.
6. Werner Van Belle
; Refinement of the SEESCOA Component Architecture; SEESCOA Deliverable 3.4; 36 pages; October 2001
This document describes the refinements we have made to the component architecture over the past 9 months. First we describe some of the esthetic things we've added to the system. These smaller refinements include the addition of a port principle. We've changed the initialisation procedure of components and other small things. In general this first section describes how one can use the component system now. The second part of this document describes some larger design enhancements, mainly to see with reification of components. This section delves a bit deeper into the component system. It discusses the why and how of the architecture. The last part describes how the component system has been made to work in a distributed context. This section also discusses why we didn't use Jini for making the component system distributed.
7. Werner Van Belle
, David Urting; The SEESCOA Component System; SEESCOA Deliverable 3.3b; 62 pages; January 2001
Most real-time embedded systems are, by nature, multitasking solutions to real-world problems. They typically deal with the interface and control of multiple eternal devices. The different parts of these systems usually run at different priorities and with different run-time characteristcis. The notion of multiple tasks or threads being active in the system at the same time is common. Many of these real-time systems are deployed on a set of microprocessors in a distributed architecture. Designing a solution for this type of problem requires a view other than object oriented systems. This document describes the component system we developed. It describes how it should be used when programming components and it describes how the wystem itself can be adpated. The document is split in 4 parts. The first part describes what a component is and gives a good idea how to think about components (at implementation level). This part is based upon the 'Component Working Definition' deliverable. This section also contains a description of the Component System and what it is supposed to cover. The second part is a discussion about 'event based' vs 'thread based'. The third part describe how we actually can write a component. This is mainly a tutorial. The fourth part describes how we can use and tune the component system to suit our needs.
8. Werner Van Belle
, Tom Toutenel
, Viviane Jonckers; Real Time UML; SEESCOA Deliverable d2.1; 26 pages; April 2000
This document reports on task 2.1: an extensive literature study of existing modeling techniques for real time embedded systems. These include UML-RT, UML for Embedded Systems, Octopus, ROOM and others
9. Werner Van Belle
, David Urting, Koen Debosschere, Yolande Berbers, Viviane Jonckers, Chris Luyten, Tom Toutenel; Working Definition of Components; SEESCOA Deliverable 1.4; 19 pages; April 2000
Most real-time embedded systems are, by nature, multitasking solutions to real-world problems. They typically deal with the interface and control of multiple external devices. The different parts of these systems usually run at different priorities and with different run-time characteristics. The notion of multiple tasks or threads being active in the system at the same time is common. Many of these real-time systems are deployed on a set of microprocessors in a distributed architecture. Designing a solution for this type of problem requires a new adapted view to components. This document describes the definition of a component and component system, as it will be used in the SEESCOA project. The definition is split in three parts: The first part describes what a component is and gives a good idea how to think about components. The second part describes the requirements and the responsibilities of a component system. The component system is the context in which a component has to operate. The third part looks at some additional characteristics and issues concerning components and the component system.
10. Koen Debosschere
, Theo D'Hondt
, Yolande Berbers
, Viviane Jonckers
, Werner Van Belle
, Chris Luyten
, David Urting
, Tom Toutenel
; Common Test Case; SEESCOA Deliverable 1.3; 10 pages; April 2000
This document reports on task 1.1: visits at the companies of the user group by the partners of the consortium. One of the objectives of this task is: Choice of one common test case that will be worked out in detail during the project. This case should be chosen to be as representative as possible, and its size should be such that it can be developed in the foreseen timeframe, integrating the results obtained during the first 2 years. The output of this activity is deliverable D1.3: description of typical applications that will be used as lighthouse and of the chosen common test case.
11. Werner Van Belle
, Tom Toutenel
; Philips Visitation Report; SEESCOA Deliverable; 24 pages; April 2000
Philips Belgium consists of a number of sites with different responsibilities. We listened to 5 speakers of the divisions Philips TASS, Philips ITCL, Philips Hasselt DVS (Digital Video Systems) & Philips Brugge UTV (Upmarket TV). Each speaker gave a presentation of the software development process in his division. This chapter summarizes these presentations and reflects the insight the consortium gained in Philips' development process.
1. Reanalysis of Histone Methylation and Acetylation Patterns; presented at ETH Zurich, Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering, Research Seminars, Switzerland, December 2008; Friedrich Miescher Institute (FMI) Computational Biology Seminars, Switzerland, December 2008
2. Sequencing by synthesis: from samples to data patterns.; presented at Novartis; Quantitative Biology Meetings, Switzerland, November 2008
3. A Whole-genome RNAi Screen Identifies Novel Regulators of Notch Signaling in Drosophila melanogaster; presented at ETH Zurich Departmental Retreat Bad Zurzach, Switzerland, October 2008
4. Deep Sequencing; presented at 1st workshop on high throughput sequencing; ETH Zurich in Basel, Switzerland, October 2008; All Systems X day, Switzerland, October 2008; ETH Zurich Departmental Retreat Bad Zurzach, Switzerland, October 2008
5. Modulation of p53 protein isoforms and their function in acute myeloid leukaemia; presented at FEBS Meeting Oslo, Norway, October 2008
6. Primary Analysis: From Sample to Wig file in 8 Easy Steps; presented at 1st workshop on high throughput sequencing, Switzerland, October 2008
7. The Illumina GA II Sequencing System; presented at Department of Computer Science; ETH Zurich; Zurich, Switzerland, October 2008
8. What happened to my data. Screening a mutal stabilized reporter system.; presented at ETH Zurich, Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering, Research Seminars, Switzerland, August 2008
9. Deep Sequencing Unit: Inputs, Outputs, File Sizes & Formats; presented at ETH Zurich in Basel, Switzerland, July 2008
10. Deep Sequencing Unit: Information Infrastructure; presented at ETH Zurich in Basel, Switzerland, April 2008
11. Biological Networks and Noise Propagation; presented at ETH Zurich in Basel, Switzerland, January 2008
12. BpmDj and some High Level Concepts for Data Flow programming; presented at PLEIAD laboratory of the Computer Science Department of the University of Chile (Faculty of Engineering), Chile, January 2008
13. 2D Gel Correlation Analysis and Perspectives on Systems Biology; presented at Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Basel, Switzerland, October 2007
14. Microarrays, Protein Interaction Maps and Elevated Mazes; presented at Animal Sciences Group, Wagingen Universiteit, Lelystad, The Netherlands, September 2007
15. Close-to-the-experiment Data Analysis; presented at LabForum, University Hospital Tromso (UNN), Norway, March 2007
16. Correlation Analysis 2D Gels; presented at the High Technology Center of Bergen, Norway, February 2007
17. Micro Array Error Analysis and Integration/Visualisation of a Protein Interaction Map; presented at the Department Virology, University of Tromso and LabForum, University of Tromso & University Hospital of Tromso, Norway, January 2007
18. Concurrency Adaptation using Learning State Machines; presented at the computer science department of the university of Aberdeen, United Kingdom, August 2006
19. Systems Biology: Bridging the gap between experiment and interpretation; presented at Norut IT, Tromso, Norway, March 2006; the Institute of Biology, University of Tromso, Norway, February 2006; the Institute of Molecular Biology, University of Tromso, Norway, January 2006
20. Data Driven Programming: Change Nets; presented at Norut IT, Tromso, Norway, November 2005
21. Biological Systems: Bridging the gap between experiments and interpretation; presented at the Functional Proteomics Unit, Departement of Medical Protein research, Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB), Gent, Belgium, September 2005
22. On the need for robust techniques; presented at the Department of Economic Sciences, University Leuven, Belgium, September 2005
23. Advanced Signal Processing Techniques in BpmDj; presented at the Insomnia Festival 2005, Norway, August 2005
24. Mk5 Cell Cycle Analysis; presented at the Department Virology, Institute Molecular Biology, University Of Tromso, Norway, August 2005
25. Analysis of wild type P53 protein distribution in cancer cells; presented at the 6th Bergen Conference on Cancer Research 2005 (BCCR2005) section: proteomics in cancer , Norway, May 2005
26. Denoising of MALDI-TOF Mass Spectra; presented at AOPC2005, The VIIth European Symposium of the Protein Society, section proteomics, interactomics and protein networks, Barcelona, Spain, May 2005; the Computational Biology Unit (CBU), Bergen, Norway, August 2004
27. BpmDj Meta-Data Extraction; presented at the Music Conservatorium, Hoyskolen Tromso, Norway, April 2005; the Psychology Department, University of Tromso, Norway, March 2005; the Computer Science Department, University of Tromso, Norway, February 2005; the Earth Observation Group, Norut IT, Tromso, Norway, May 2004
28. Denoising of Maldi-Tof Mass Spectra & denoising of 2D gels; presented at the Programming Technology Lab, Computer Science Department, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, April 2005
29. P53 Image Denoising; presented at Norut IT as part of a project delivarable in cooperation with the Hematyology Section, University Bergen, Norway, February 2005
30. Envision Software Package for the Concerted Study of Biological Data; presented at NBS 2005 (Poster), Tromso, Norway, January 2005; at Bioprosp 2004 (poster), Tromso, Norway, November 2004
31. Overview of Bioinformatics at Norut IT; presented at the Veterinaer Institute, Tromso, Norway, December 2004
32. Biological Systems, Modeling & Simulation; presented at PROBE, the proteomics unit in Bergen, Norway, August 2004; Norut IT, Tromso, Norway, August 2004
33. From Connection-less over Connection-oriented towards...; presented at the Computer Science Departement, University of Tromø, Norway, January 2004
34. The Development of an Intelligent Concurrency Adaptor in order To Mediate The Differences between Conflicting Concurrency Interfaces; presented at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Public Session PhD Defense, Belgium, November 2003; the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Closed Session PhD Defense, Belgium, September 2003
35. Automatic Generation of Concurrency Adaptors for Multi Agents; presented at the International Conference on Evolvable Systems 2003 (ICES03), Trondheim, Norway, March 2003
36. Adaptor Generation for Concurrency Interface Conflicts by Means of Petri-nets and Genetic Algorithms; presented at Institut f¨ur Informatik (IAM), Universit¨at Bern, Bern, Switzerland, November 2002
37. Automatic Adaptor Generation by Means of Evolution; presented at the Programming Technology Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussels (PROG/VUB), Belgium, May 2002
38. The Component Architecture; presented at Siemens ATEA, Herentals, Belgium, April 2002
39. Borg, a Way to hapiness in distributed environments: differences with pico; presented at the Prototype Meeting at the Programming Technology Lab (PROG), Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, December 2001
40. Building Components for Mid-Scale Embedded Systems: What Kind of Infrastructure do we Need: the Component Architecture; presented at Philips TASS, Brussels, Belgium, December 2001
41. The Component System a bit further; presented at the SEESCOA Meeting Brussels, Belgium, October 2001
42. Concurrency Guarding and Error Resolution: Genetic Programming; presented at the Programming Technology Lab, Computer Science Department, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, September 2001
43. About the lack of concurrency control primitives in Open Distributed Object Systems; presented at the European Conference on Object Orientd Programming 2001 (ECOOP 2001), workshop 17 on object oriented distributed systems, Budapest, Hungary, June 2001
44. The Pitfalls of the Connectionless Component Model; presented at Inno.com, Beersel, Belgium, April 2001
45. Experiences in Mobile Computing: The CBorg Mobile Multi-Agent System; presented at the Conference on Technology of Object Oriented Languages and Systems, Eastern Europe (TOOLSEE 2001): Components for Mobile Computing, Zurich, Switzerland, March 2001
46. The Component System so far; presented at the SEESCOA User Group Meeting in Gent, Belgium, January 2001
47. Glueing Components in Wide Area Neworks; presented at the Programming Technology Lab, Computer Science Department, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, November 2000
48. The CBorg Mobile Multi Agent System: An Overview; presented at the Company Contact Presentation organized by the Programming Technology Lab (PROG), Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, August 2000; Ecole des Mines de Nantes, France, June 2000
49. Agent Mobility and Reification of Computational State, an Experiment in Migration; presented at the European Conference on Object Oriented Programming 2000 (ECOOP 2000), Cannes, France, June 2000
50. Software Modelling Techniques for Embedded Systems; presented at a SEESCOA User Meeting, Belgium, April 2000
51. Components; presented at a SEESCOA User Meeting, Belgium, March 2000
52. Location Transparent Routing in Mobile Multi Agent Systems: Merging Name Lookups with Routing; presented at Conference on Future Trends in Distributed Computing (FTDCS 1999), Cape Town, South Africa, December 1999
53. Applicability Of UML/RT to Embedded Systems; presented at a SEESCOA Meeting at the Katholic University of Leuven, Belgium, November 1999
54. Gevalstudie Mobiele Multi-Agent Systemen: CBorg; presented at the SEESCOA Kick-off meeting, Computer Science Department (DISTRINET), Katholic University Leuven (KUL), Belgium, October 1999; the FKFO meeting Antwerpen, Universitaire Installing Antwerpen, Belgium, September 1999; the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, December 1998; the FKFO meeting Antwerpen, Universitaire Instelling Antwerpen, Belgium, December 1998
55. Very Short Introduction to PROG; presented at the SEESCOA Kickoff meeting at the Catholic University Of Leuven, Belgium, October 1999
56. Positie Optimalisaties Mobiele Multi-Agent Systems: stand van zaken; presented at the Programming Technology Lab, Computer Science Department, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, November 1998
1. Theory and Exercises 'Concurrent Systems' - given at the VUB, academic year 2000-2001 for Franklin Vermeulen, aimed at the 3th year computer science, Vesalius college.
2. Exercises 'theory of database systems' - given at the VUB, academic year 1998-1999 for Robert Meersman, aimed at the 3th year of computer science.
3. Exercises 'Graphics' - given at the VUB, academic years 1998-2000 (2), for Theo D'Hondt, as an optional course in the 2nd cycle of the computer science curriculum.
4. Exercises 'Algorithms and Data Structures' - given at the VUB, academic year 1998-1999 (1), for Theo D'Hondt, aimed at the 2nd year computer science.
5. Exercises 'Distributed Systems' - given at the VUB, academic years 1998-2003 (5), for Marnix Goossens, aimed at the 2nd cycle of the standard computer science curriculum, the 2nd cycle of the applied computer science curriculum and the 3th year in teleinformatics.
6. Project guidance for a computer science course on Systems - given at ETH Zü rich, for Nessime Tatbul in conjunction with Nihal Dindar.
1. User Interface for Mobile Agent; Tan Jiaming; 1997-1998
2. Print Spooling: a Critical Approach Toward a Specific Problem in a Hybrid Environment; Dominique Kindt; 1997-1998
3.* A Critical Evaluation of Distributed Collaborative Computer Applications; Stefan Van de Velde; 1997-1998
4.* A Study of Communication Models for Mobile Multi Agent Systems; Karsten Verelst; 1998-1999
5. Combining Components using Control Flow Components; Philippe Demaecker; 1999-2000
6. Applicability of Mobility, a Case Study; Frederick Nyssens; 2000-2001
7.* Shagger: a Distributed File Sharing Community with Transparent User Management and Adaptive Replication; Wim Boffe; 2000-2001
8.** A Strategy to Generate a Scheduler for Time Critical Programs by means of Finite State Machines; Jessie Dedecker; 2000-2001
9. Applications for Code Mobility on Handheld Devices; Enzhen Luo; 2000-2001
10. Synchronisation & Communication in Mobile Multi Agents Systems: CSP Revisited; Jannes Pockele; 2000-2001
11.* Using a Declarative Language to support Concurrency Management in Mobile Multi Agent Systems; Kristof Van Buggenhout; 2000-2002
12. Quality of Service for Mobile Multi Agent Systems; Cedric Van Rykel; 2001-2002
13. Reflection by means of JIT compilation; Paul Henri van der Steichel; 2001-2002
14. Distributed Application Serving using Mobile Agents; Koen Bailleul; 2001-2002
15.* Transparent Fault Tolerance for Mobile Multi Agent Systems; Pieter Verheyden; 2001-2002
16. [Sensor only] Distributed Transaction Management - A Simulation; Weihai Pan; 12 Dec 2004; Computer Science Department, Universiyt Tromso
1. Modularizing Advanced Transaction Management; Tackling Tangled Aspect Code; Johan Fabry
2. Jessie Dedecker with his Phd on Pervasive Applications
Jury Member for CETRIL (Centre Européen de Transfert et de Recherche en Informatique Libre) in 2006.
Operating Systems: MSDOS, MS Windows (3.11, 95, 98, NT), Linux (Slackware, Debian, Gentoo), Solaris & SunOS
Programming Languages: Python, Jython, C, C++, Pascal, Prolog, Lisp, Scheme, Java (1.1.2, 1.1.8, 1.3.1, 1.4.0, 1.4.1), Pico, Borg; Libraries: QT, MFC,...
Middleware: OrbixWeb, Aglets, Voyager,...
Databases: MSAccess, MySQL, PostgressSQL...
Methodologies: UML (MSC's), OMT, Petri-Net Modelling, Room, Real-Time UML...
From November 1995 till December 1997 I was a board member of the student organization 'Infogroup'. This internal VUB organization was responsible for maintaining the computer rooms available to students, distributing course notes and maintaining a library of computer science books. I was active as system administrator and course manager. Key-points of this period:
The Programming Technology Lab of the VUB was responsible for the
organization of ECOOP'98, a well known conference on software engineering
by means of objects/aspects/components. I've been responsible for
the setup and maintenance of the visitors computer rooms.