We are thrilled to congratulate Matthias Pex, Louis Adriaens and Ward Goossens, for each being awarded a prestigious prize at their graduation!

Matthias was awarded the Biomedical Engineering Excellence Award for his master’s thesis “Bio-inspired control of a brittle star robot: towards enhanced resilience to damage”. Throughout his research, he demonstrated outstanding initiative, adaptability, and interdisciplinary learning. He is starting a PhD with us to further explore the capabilities of bio-inspired control. Louis received the Isabella Van Portugal Award, for achieving the highest grades amongst his peers over the course of his engineering studies at Ghent University. He will be joining us for a PhD bringing mobile manipulation to the household environment. Last but not least, Ward showed exceptional creativity and independence when working on his master’s thesis “Design and Modelling of a Multimodal Sensor Matrix with Multiple-Frequency Driving Method”. For his extraordinary electronic design skills, he received the imec-award. There is no doubt in our minds that he will move on to a successful career in industry.

From left to right: Matthias, Louis and Ward with their respective prizes at the 2024 graduation ceremony.

These awards are a testament to our students’ exceptional talent and commitment. It has been a pleasure to guide Matthias and Ward; their dedication, hard work, and innovaton has already been a great asset to our group. We look forward to having Matthias and Louis join our ranks and see them grow together with IDLab-AIRO!