Biography
Personal: Bart De Moor was born Tuesday July 12 1960, in Halle, Belgium, is married and has three children. He attended primary and secondary school in the Sint-Victor Institute and the Sint-Jan-Berchmanscollege (Latin-Mathematics) and studied solfege, piano, percussion and composition at the Music Academy Orfeus. He has a Master Degree in Electrical Engineering (1983) and a PhD in Engineering (1988) from KU Leuven. He was a Visiting Research Associate at Stanford University (1988-1990) at the departments of EE (ISL, Prof. Kailath) and CS (Prof. Golub). He is a full professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering in the research group STADIUS, and a guest professor at the University of Siena (www.diism.unisi.it/en).
Research: His research interests are in numerical linear algebra, optimization, algebraic geometry, systems and control theory, data driven AI and machine learning with applications in the process industry and bio-medical big data processing (see publications: http://www.bartdemoor.be). He is or has been the coordinator of numerous research projects and networks funded by regional, federal and European funding agencies, including a prestigious Advanced Research Grant of the European Research Council (2020-2025). Currently, he is leading a research group of 20 PhD students and postdocs and 86 PhDs were obtained under his guidance. He has been teaching at several universities in Europe and the US. He is/was a member/chairman of several scientific and professional organizations and committees, including the European Research Council, the Wallenberg Autonomous Systems Program (http://wasp-sweden.org), the Villum Foundation (https://veluxfoundations.dk/en/teknisk-og-naturvidenskabelig-forskning/young-investigators), and the Finland Universities Research Profiling funding (Chairman 2015-2018, Academy of Finland). He is/was an associate editor of and reviewer for several scientific journals and conferences. His work has won him several scientific awards (Leybold-Heraeus Prize (1986), Leslie Fox Prize (1989), Guillemin-Cauer best paper Award of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems (1990), Laureate of the Belgian Royal Academy of Sciences (1992), bi-annual Siemens Award (1994), best paper award of Automatica (1996), IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award (1999)). In November 2010, he received the 5-annual FWO Excellence Award out of the hands of King Albert II of Belgium. Since 2004 he is a Fellow of IEEE, since 2017 a SIAM Fellow and since 2022 an IFAC Fellow. Since 2000 he is member of the Royal Academy of Belgium for Science and Arts, and since 2023 of the Academia Europeae. He has been honored by King Filip of Belgium in 2021 as ‘Commander in the Order of Leopold’.
Leadership: From 1991-1999 he was the Head of Cabinet and/or Main Advisor on Science and Technology of several ministers of the Belgian Federal Government (Demeester, Martens) and the Flanders Regional Governments (Demeester, Van den Brande)[1]. From 2005 - 2007, he was the Head of Cabinet on socio-economic policy of the minister-president of Flanders, Yves Leterme, capacity in which he was the coordinator of the socio-economic business plan for the Flemish region. He is also one of the architects of the Flanders AI Program and Chairman of the Flanders AI Academy.
He was or is in the Board of the Flemish Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology, the Study Center for Nuclear Energy, the Flemish Children Science Center Technopolis, the Alamire Foundation (chairman), the AstraZeneca Foundation and several other scientific and cultural organizations. He is co-founder of the philosophical think tank Worldviews. In 2016 he founded the Health Tech Experience Center Health House, of which he is the chairman. Since 2019, he is member of the Board of UCSIA, founded by the Jesuit Order and of the school community Ignatius-in-Beweging.
He was the Chairman of the Industrial Research Fund of the KU Leuven, Chairman of the Hercules Foundation (scientific infrastructure funding) and a member of the Board of the Danish National Research Foundation. As a vice-rector for International Policy (2009-2013), he was a member of the Executive Committee and Board of Directors of the KU Leuven and chairman of the Committee on Internationalisation and Development Cooperation of the VLUHR (www.vluhr.be). He is a co-founder of the International School of Leuven and was an expert member of ESGAB nominated by the European Council. He is member of the Coordination Committee of Leuven Mindgate. Since 2021 he is the chair of the board of the Capricorn Digital Growth Fund (venture capital) and since 2022 Chair of the Board of Athumi (Vlaams Datanutsbedrijf).
Entrepreneurship: He co-founded 8 spinoff companies, 7 of which are still active IPCOS, TML (and its spinout Telraam), Data4S (acquired by Norkom), Silicos, Trendminer (acquired by Software AG), Cartagenia (acquired by Agilent), Ugentec (acquired by Summa Invest), Lindacare, Aspect Analytics, Timeseer.ai.
Outreach: He made regular television appearances in the Science Show ‘Hoe?Zo!’ on national television in Belgium, had a regular science talk on Radio 2 and patrons the 'Flemish Youth Technology Olympiade'.