About me

I am an associate professor in the domains of brain-computer interfacing (BCIs) and human-computer interaction (HCI) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU). 

Before joining the VU, I was affiliated with Tilburg University for 6 years, where I served as the Research Program Leader and the lab coordinator for Robotics & Avatars Lab at MindLabs.

I completed my Ph.D. in Japan, at the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, Osaka University under the supervision of Prof. Hiroshi Ishiguro. During my graduate program, I also worked as a research affiliate at Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR). In my doctoral research, I focused on BCI control of android robots and investigated the sense of embodiment that operators experienced when they controlled a humanlike body with their brain activity.  The studies I conducted at ATR received high recognition from the institute and I received an “Outstanding Research Award” in the year 2015.

After completing my PhD, I received a JSPS postdoctoral fellowship (which is a highly prestigious fellowship in Japan) to conduct research at the University of Tokyo. There, I worked on an ImPACT project entitled "Actualize Energetic Life by Creating Brain Information Industries") funded by the Japanese Council for Science, Technology and Innovation. This project sought to develop a BCI-driven social robot that performed a user-specific therapeutic intervention based on real-time monitoring of the user's brain activity and prediction of his/her cognitive state changes.