Who am I?

The scientist

I started out as a theoretical physicist. Then I was a commodity researcher. Eventually I became a numerical weather modeller. I've been a member of the Numerical Weather Prediction team of the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium since 2000. Some of the topics that interest me are

• Data assimilation using wavelets

• Ensemble Prediction Systems

• Probabilistic weather forecasts

• Forecast Verification

• R coding

I teach a course on Predictability at the university of Ghent, as part of the post-graduate program in weather and climate modelling.

The musician

Outside of science, my main interest is music. I'm an experienced choir bass and when family life permits I try to find time to compose. Most of my music is for choirs, with some recorder and piano compositions on the side.

In my choral works I try to balance influences of renaissance polyphony and contemporary harmony.

The maps guy

I am the maintainer of a number of R packages, mainly world maps and visualisation of meteorological data.

The geek

Once in a while, I do strange things like winning the International Obfuscated C Code Contest.

Don't ask why. To quote from "Cyrano de Bergerac" (E. Rostand): C'est bien plus beau lorsque c'est inutile.