Prof. Joni Dambre, PhD

Prof. Joni Dambre is a full professor at Ghent University and affiliated with imec through IDLab. She is one of the three professors leading IDLab’s AIRO (AI and RObotics) team. Throughout her career, she has published research results related to brain-inspired computing techniques, (neuro)robotics (in the Flagship Human Brain Project), hardware-efficient AI and machine learning applied in a wide range of application domains. Her main focus today is on sign language computational linguistics, in which she closely collaborates with the Flemish signing community and sign language linguists.

Codesign and cocreation are essential to her approach. Prof. Dambre’s goal is to make sign language technology maximally accessible, in order to improve information access for deaf signers, facilitate communication with hearing non-signers in situations where an interpreter is not available, help non-signers acquire and practice minimal signing skills and support sign language linguistics research with AI-based methods. As a first step on this road, a collaborative research project with the Flemish Sign Language Center recently resulted in the permanent integration of video-based sign search in the (freely accessible) online Flemish Sign Language Dictionary.