I’m starting something new! I’ve joined the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) at the University of Amsterdam as an Assistant Professor, where I’ll be leading the newly established Artificial Intelligence for Open Government (AI for OpenGov) ICAI Lab. I am very excited to dive into this societally relevant (in particular in today’s political climate) topic, and I am convinced AI can play a meaningful and important role in enabling a more transparent government.
After eight years of working in industry, returning to academia was never part of some grand master plan (there is none), but I was particularly drawn to this ICAI Lab, which has been set up with the Rijksorganisatie voor Informatiehuishouding (RvIHH), as it means I get to do applied research in Information Retrieval and Natural Language Processing, with real impact. The ICAI Lab will kick off with three PhD students under my supervision, who are also employed at the RvIHH (and hence close on the action). We get to work with a so-called Living Lab, a “real” search engine with (actual) open data: UvA’s WooGle. In sum, applied research, on a societally relevant and impactful topic, with real data and users! What’s not to like?
I consider myself lucky to be able to take this new turn in my career and am looking forward to this new adventure!