Siegfried Mercelis is an assistant professor at the University of Antwerp. He has master degrees in both music production and engineering (electronics and ICT). He received the VIK award for his master thesis on parallel data structures. From 2012 to 2016 he was employed at Van den Berghe R&D under a Baekeland PhD mandate on the subject of optimizing and parallelizing real time media applications. In December 2016 he obtained his PhD in applied engineering at the University of Antwerp, where he is currently employed as assistant professor and program manager of the AI applications team. His team of 30+ researchers is committed to bridging the gap between academic AI research and industry in domains such as chemical process control, autonomous shipping, smart buildings, logistics and mobility.