About Me
Table of Contents
I am an ever-curious, hardworking person, always looking to improve. It does not matter if I'm focusing on the big picture, or working on nitty gritty details, I always use the right tool for the job to deliver high-quality (and maintainable!) results. Regardless of the work being a full migration to a new technological framework or just developing a new feature in a legacy codebase, I'm always up for the task if I can learn something. With my passion for sharing knowledge, I hope to enhance both personal and team success. For a slightly more professional (and complete) explanation of who I am, visit my LinkedIn profile.
Any linked files (i.e. PDFs, slidesets, etc.) are mine. If you wish to use them -- commercially or otherwise -- please reach out to me first!
Experience
Fullstack Software Engineer @ Undisclosed (NDA)
A super cool project that I can't tell you about. I've gotten permission to share that I've worked on a few things, namely: maintaining the Atlassian stack used, obtaining and documenting the requirements for the application (my effort), and subsequently designing, implementing, and testing the application (team effort). Calling this a "team lead" role is a bit over-the-top, but still technically correct.
Software Engineer @ The Tenebrous Dragon
A while back I helped a friend whose company name is The Tenebrous Dragon (not my choice!) with a project to automate some of their internal quote and invoice creation processes. There was an attempt made in a google sheet, and I completely polished it to something usable. So far, no requests for changes, so it's been working well.
PhD @ Utrecht University
During my PhD I look into the interplay between data and processes. An approachable example of what this means can be found on this page. In a nutshell, I look into how we can work with data objects using a process-aware hat, and doing so from a theoretical/mathematical point of view.
Publications
Thesis @ Vanderlande
I wrote my thesis at Vanderlande, a company that (amongst others) builds complete solutions for warehouse automation. The project was focused on improving their STOREPICK evolution, a product that helps optimize the picking process in warehouses. The project was exploratory in nature, as it was unclear if a data-driven approach to improvement was possible. The goal: find out if by modelling the process and data with a graph database (Neo4j) we can find interesting patterns. More details on the thesis page.
Resarch Intern @ Process Analytics Lab, TU/e
During my masters, I did an internship at the Process Analytics lab at TU/e. I looked into combining the fields of process discovery and probabilistic models. This was very exploratory in nature, consisting of a lot of reading and creativity. Quite a few different directions for future work came out of this internship. As my first real research experience, it was a great learning opportunity. More details can be found on the internship page.
Bug Hunter Extraordinaire
The title aside, I have worked on a company's internal inventory management system, built using Kendo UI, the php language, and SOAP (where you had a bunch of xml files, as opposed to json). During my time there, I was primarily focused on bughunting the existing codebase. By identifying and fixing all bugs I could find, I've left their inhouse inventory management system in a much better (read: functional, as opposed to broken) state than it was before.
Education
Master: Data Science in Engineering
I have an MSc titled Data Science in Engineering, a specialised mastertrack within the Computer Science and Engineering master at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). During my masters, I focused mostly on process mining and generative models. I also did an internship at the Process Analytics lab, and wrote my thesis at Vanderlande to gain experience using real data. During all of my studies, I was teaching assistant for a variety of courses.
Bachelor: Computer Science
I have a BSc in Computer science, also done at the TU/e. My bachelor was deliberately less about specific topics -- instead embracing a wide variety of subjects -- to give me a good overview (at the time) of the field, and provide a good base for my masters. As opposed to a thesis, at the time of studying TU/e had decided to do a bachelor project, which was a group project where we had to build software for a real client.
Honors Academy: During my bachelor I was enrolled in the honors academy doing Competitive Programming and Problem Solving (CPPS). For an explanation on CPPS, see here. My (ancient) cheatsheet is also available . I gave a talk about subset dynamic programming, in case you want to look at pretty slides or read an old report .
Volunteer work
- I am currently a volunteer at handjehelpen (page in Dutch), a non-profit that connects people with needs to volunteers. I'm privileged to go biking on weekly basis with a now friend of mine, and aim to continue doing so for as long as I can.
- Although for a brief period of time, I volunteered at Together with Classical, a charity that stands for bringing classical music closer to people.
- I was the secretary of the Japanese culture association Kinjin during academic year 2017-2018, responsible for all communication and administration. During this period I was actively helping events at various Dutch anime conventions such as animecon and abunai.
- I was a committee member of the Kinjin Lustrum committee during above academic year. I helped organize (amongst others) a sushi workship with Chef Taji, a movie viewing of Kimi no Na wa (Your Name) at De Zwarte Doos, and a matsuri (festival) with 200+ visitors.
Certificates
- TOEFL iBT (115/120); an English language proficiency exam testing reading, speaking, and listening skills. While technically no longer valid for e.g. university applications, I still consider this a nice piece of evidence for my English proficiency.
- Teacher Training for PhD Candidates; an intensive weekly course on how to design all things education. Taught by Freudenthal Institute. See this as evidence for my teaching skills.
- Responsible Conduct of Research; a course on the ethical and responsible conduct of research. Taught by the Graduate School of Life Sciences at Utrecht University. See this as evidence for my research ethics and integrity.
- Blussen met kleine blustoestellen; a course on how to use small fire extinguishers. Taught by Crisiscom, certified by nibhv. I hope to never make use of this.