To be productive in these challenging times, is often, a challenge. Fortunately, I am (virtually) surrounded by my partner, friends, peers, and mentors. Recently, I have co-organised the GENEA Workshop & Challenge 2020, and attended the IVA Conference.
At the moment my research is focussed on improving evaluation standards for the field of gesture generation in embodied conversational agents, and I hope to soon publish another paper on this matter. Together with Prof. Dr. Tony Belpeame I currently co-supervise Ruben Janssens, who is working on Human-Robot Interaction for his master thesis.
Currently, I am also a teaching assistant (together with Matthijs Biondina) for the Robotics Course at Ghent University, for which we still organise non-virtual practicals (with the required safety measures).
At the beginning of the pandemic, I promised myself I would exercise more often, to stay (mentally) in shape. When the weather permits, you will find my outside either running (at a leisurely pace) or on my racing bike (a bit faster than running). Sometimes, you will find me walking longer distances in the Greater Ghent region (we even got hills close by!).