Artificial Intelligence Lab

The Artificial Intelligence Lab, headed by Prof. Dr. Ann Nowé and Prof. Dr. Bernard Manderick, is the first AI lab on the European mainland. As part of the Computer Science Department at Vrije Universiteit Brussel,  the AI Lab has pursued two main routes towards the understanding of artificial intelligence: both the symbolic route (classical AI) as the dynamics route (complex systems science). Over the years, more than hundred researchers have worked at the laboratory using these approaches to investigate various aspects of intelligence, including: knowledge systems, autonomous robots, machine learning systems, natural language processing components, design and implementation tools.

The group has a strong collaboration with their counterparts at the Université Libre de Bruxelles on topics related to Computational Biology and (Evolutionary) Game Theory. The group participates in the Interuniversity Institute of Bioinformatics in Brussels (IBsquare), which gathers all medical and computational expertise in the Brussels area to tackle medical questions related to cancer, diabetes, etc.

Tom Lenaerts holds a partial affiliation with the Artificial Intelligence Lab of the VUB, as well as being the ULB director of the Interuniversity Institute of Bioinformatics in Brussels (IBsquare) and vice chair of the Benelux Association for Artificial Intelligence. His group hosts the Belgian academic AI researcher portal which aims to connect all AI academics via a single contact point. Tom’s team is involved in ELIXIR Implementation studies on rare diseases and scalable curation.