Machine Learning Group

The Machine Learning Group is a research unit of the Computer Science Department at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, currently co-headed by Gianluca Bontempi and Tom Lenaerts. The group’s research encompasses interdisciplinary topics ranging from AI, machine learning and behavioural informatics (evolution, network and group formation…) to computational biology and medicine (metastasis dynamics, oligogenic diseases, medical text mining…). Members of Tom Lenaerts’ team actively develop the IBsquare Toolbox for Oligogenic Analysis which comprises three tools (DIDA , ORVAL , VarCoPP) that assist researchers and doctors in the identification of genetic diseases. The Toolbox has been recognised as ELIXIR Belgium Node Service in 2019.

Tom Lenaerts also holds a partial affiliation with the Artificial Intelligence Lab of the VUB, is 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.